Joanna Bourke: ‘Speaking about suffering helps cope with it’
The author of The Story of Pain explains how an agonising hospital stay prompted her to explore an experience felt very differently down the ages
Did the Mona Lisa have syphilis?
Lisa del Giocondo, the model for Leonardo’s painting, was recorded buying snail water – then considered a cure for the STD. It could be the secret to a painting haunted by the spectre of death
Never Enough by Barney Hoskyns; The Ice Age by Luke Williams; A Really Good Day by Ayelet Waldman – review
Three vivid memoirs reveal the horrific pull – and possible benefits – of illicit substances
Deliciously Ella with Friends by Ella Mills – digested read
John Crace reduces the latest clean and healthy cookbook from the blogging author to a slimmer 700 words
‘I was weak, despairing, confused’: did writing a novel make me ill?
It started with a bottomless tiredness, and soon novelist Sarah Perry was unable to function. Had she brought it all on herself?
Get Control of Sugar Now! Great Choices for Your Healthy Future by Paul McKenna – digested read
John Crace reduces the hypnotist’s self-help advice for the sweet-toothed to an even lower-calorie 800 words
Embrace review – Australian body-image doc takes hold of the issues
Taryn Brumfitt fronts a worthy documentary about women’s relationships with their bodies – but seems afraid to use the word ‘feminism’
JK Rowling and Joe Wicks powered 2016 surge in UK book sales
Helped by Harry Potter and the hit fitness guru, year on year takings to December rose sharply to £1.59bn
Ruby Wax: ‘I wanted to find a method to defuse my depression’
The comedian and mental-health campaigner explains how realising that everyone feels crazy led to writing A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled
Future Sex: A New Kind of Free Love by Emily Witt – digested read
John Crace brings Emily Witt’s investigation of sexual mores in the Google era to a swifter conclusion