Tormented Hope

Looks at nine prominent hypochondriacs - James Boswell, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Daniel Paul Schreber, Alice James, Marcel Proust, Glenn Gould and Andy Warhol - and what their lives tell us about the way the mind works with, and against, the body.

It's so good that, after reading it, I needed a lie-down.

A brilliant series of portraits

Fascinating ... Written with great elegance and shrewd understanding

Illuminating, humane and beautiful

Ingenious and intriguing

Brian Dillon is a superbly careful writer. ... [This book] will delight, move and horrify any of the millions of us who, like the late Spike Milligan, have at one time or another contemplated having "I told you I was ill" inscribed on our gravestones.

A mini-masterpiece

Excellent

Strangely delightful ... Dillon's book is constantly intelligent

You don't need to be a hypochondriac to enjoy this series of discursive, insightful essays that are full of quirky details and fascinating anecdotes

Brian Dillon was born in Dublin in 1969. He writes on the arts, books and culture for a number of publications. His first book, In the Dark Room , won the Irish Book Award for Non-fiction in 2006. He lives in Canterbury.