'It's so good that, after reading it, I needed a lie-down' - Hilary Mantel, Guardian Books of the Year

Brian Dillon 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. His findings are stimulating and surprising, and the stories he tells are often moving, sometimes hilarious, and always gripping. With a new afterword on Michael Jackson.

Brian Dillon's first book, In the Dark Room, won the Irish Book Award for Non-fiction in 2006. He lives in Canterbury.