This is Not a Book About Cancer

A series of deeply personal interviews with women who've been to the brink.

She could be a schoolteacher, a young mum of three, an opera singer, a yoga teacher, a fashion designer, a philanthropist, a podcaster, a dancer, a surgeon, a lawyer, a sex therapist, a poet, a cook, a pro golfer, an aristocrat, a cleaner, or a Hollywood producer. And she has lived with cancer.

She is no longer the woman she once was, but she's here, and has emerged with greater clarity on how she truly wants to live.

For every story, there is a woman who has come through it and is willing to show us how, and tell us how it feels to...

• Be repeatedly misdiagnosed.
• Choose between the baby growing inside of you and the cancer treatment that must start.
• Feel guilty that you survived cancer when your husband and daughter didn't.
• Watch your husband get comfortable with the idea of you dying.
• Live with the shame of believing you caused this.
• Admit you're struggling financially.
• Tell your parents they may outlive you.
• Be surrounded by help but feel desperately lonely.

BUT ALSO how it feels to...

• Prefer the purposeful life you have with stage four cancer over the one you lived before.
• Consider your cancer a joy for the change it brought to your life.
• Fall back in love with your body and have the best sex of your life.
• Finally realise how deeply you are loved.

Cancer is not the star of this book. The women are. They are sharing their lived experience through the fear, rage, desire, gratitude, loneliness, envy and all the emotions to help and support every other woman who will hear the words 'you have cancer'.

Among those telling their stories are Diana Henry, Zandra Rhodes, Alexandra Schulman, Dr Sian Williams, Lisa Dawson, along with supporters and carers for friends and family with cancer including Cara Delevingne, Giovanna Fletcher, Founder of Scamp and Dude, Heather James (mum of Deborah) and Ann Russell (English Cleaning Lady, 3m followers on TikTok - brilliant interview), Dr Liz O'Riordan, Tamara Beckwith and the Duchess of Rutland.

The book celebrates the life and strength of these women, and the community they are creating for each other.