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Too often, us middle-aged blokes with PPMS (the one that just gets progressively worse) get forgotten amidst the mass swirl of the c.M, too, was sanguine about what might lie ahead – Douglas-Fairhurst carefully outlined a series of increasingly grim scenarios, beginning with whether M would be willing to cut his toenails for him – and he was also funny about it, ready to take the piss. In 2013 he was a Judge of the Man Booker Prize, and in 2015 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

A darkly comic and moving reflection on what it means to be human in a world where nothing is certain, from the award-winning Oxford professor'The best book about multiple sclerosis'THE TIMES'An outstanding feat'SUNDAY TIMESWe all have trapdoors in our lives. His partner, M, set the right example: rather than maunder or end the relationship, he lightened the air with jokes.As well as the medical texts he read, he became fascinated by novels and plays in which serious illness plays a major part. Reading', he suggests, 'allows us to work out who we are by imagining who else we might have been, or who we might yet become. This is a homage to the healing power of reading as much as to the incredible medical advances of stem cell transplantation.

Though Samsa is at first cared for by his family, it isn’t long before he becomes a prisoner in his own bedroom, where eventually he dies. Since then, one drug has been approved by Nice [the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence], albeit not a very effective one. Finally, out of the tragedy of a randomly afflicted life, comes life-affirming laughter, a humanity, courageous but not ostentatious, and a defiant Nietzschean gaiety. A series of boxes had to be ticked – involving MRI scans and a lumbar puncture – before he was accepted for treatment.But now he began to see them as part of a sinister jigsaw: a fiendish puzzle that would, he soon gathered, forever remain unsolvable. An account of living with multiple sclerosis that is both deeply literary and painfully honest as it charts his journey into ill health. Radio and television appearances include Start the Week and The Culture Show , and he has also acted as the historical consultant on TV adaptations of Jane Eyre , Emma , Great Expectations , the BBC drama series Dickensian , and the feature film Enola Holmes .

it persuasively builds the case for the ability of stories to offer hope and solace; to help us become ourselves, over and over, even in extremis. His MS has, you see, changed his relationship with his body in ways that are – unlikely as this may sound – good as well as bad. Metamorphosis is the best book I have read about multiple sclerosis, and that is because it is about so much more. This memoir documents his experience of illness since then, but also ranges back over his earlier life.

This is a beautifully written memoir- the story of a devastating diagnosis but it is so much more than that. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Reading someone like him, who goes through a worse version of what I’m going through, is a form of homeopathy,” he says.