A Body Made of Glass: A History of Hypochondria author in conversation Saturday 5 October, 1pm

Caroline Crampton is the author of The Way to the Sea: The Forgotten Histories of the Thames Estuary.

£8

Her award-winning podcast, Shedunnit, is distributed by BBC Sounds. Her journalism has appeared in The New Statesman, The Times and the Guardian. An experienced broadcaster, she has appeared on BBC Two, Sky News, BBC Radio 2 and BBC Radio 4. She lives in Merseyside.

Caroline Crampton will discuss A Body Made of Glass: A History of Hypochondria at this year's Literary Festival. In this moving account of what it means to live with this invisible, elusive and increasingly widespread condition, Crampton tells the story of hypochondria, from the age of Hippocrates to the wellness industry today. Crampton covers the successive generations of doctors positing new theories and the quacks selling spurious cure-alls to the desperate. We meet those who have suffered from real and imagined conditions, including Moliere, Darwin, Woolf, Freud, Larkin, and Proust.

Crampton also examines the gendered nature of the medical response, the financial and social factors at play, and how modern technology simultaneously feeds our fears and holds out the promise of relief. Informed by Crampton’s own experience of surviving a life-threatening disease only to find herself beset by almost constant anxiety about her health, A Body Made of Glass explores the landscape of an illness, which could be physical, psychological, or both.