Steel, Mark – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk Henley-on-Thames Tue, 15 Jul 2025 14:57:35 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cropped-Bell-Background-Blue-32x32.png Steel, Mark – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk 32 32 The leopard in my house https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/the-leopard-in-my-house/ Thu, 27 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=45983 ‘I feel like there’s a leopard in my house, locked in a room. I’ve contacted the leopard authorities and they assure me they are used to dealing with leopards like this, and they have a plan for removing the leopard. It will take a while, though, and once in a while I can hear it growl.

And that’s all very reassuring. Even so, several times a day I think to myself: “Hang on, there’s a leopard in my house.”‘

One morning, while shaving, the comedian Mark Steel noticed that one side of his neck seemed larger than the other. After a whistlestop tour of assorted medical professionals, a consultant delivered the ominous words that would define the next months of his life: ‘I’m afraid it’s not good news, Mr Steel’.

And so began a journey into the heart of the NHS, as he embarked on the long and uncertain road to cancer recovery via a range of mildly torturous and entirely miraculous treatments. What, if anything, might he learn about himself – and our capacity for coping with life when times get tough – as he becomes part of a club that one in two British people will ultimately join?

A frank and funny diary of one man’s rather trying year, this is an unforgettable and uplifting story of getting ill, getting on with it, and getting better.

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