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Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leif, the literary editorial

of Spectator. And this week my guest is the writer and academic Robert Douglas Ferhurst, whose new book is Metamorphosis, A Life in Pieces.

Now, Robert's previous books have tended to be about 19th century literature and culture, but this one's very much more personal.

And it begins, Robert, with what you described as a trapdoor. Can you explain the trapdoor? Yeah. I mean, I say that we all

have trap doors in our lives that we tend to tread on but then move away from. This one was in a

neurologist's office in Oxford. And as she began talking, I could hear the wood creaking slightly.

And then as she delivered the news, which I was, well, was I partly expecting it?

Had I been doing some doom Googling? Yes.

But also, no, it's still a massive surprise when someone says to you, oh, and by the way, you've got multiple sclerosis.

And that's when the trap door opened and I could just feel myself plummeting.

And this was how long ago?

So this was 2017.

At this point, for the readers or listeners who don't know you or your work,

you're at Don at Mouldering College, Oxford.

You've previously published,

give a little sketch of your life, because it's a quite happy life.

Yeah, well, exactly.

I mean, so the new book is called Metamorphosis.

But in some ways, that had been an underlying theme through quite a lot of the work I'd done up till then.

So I'd written about Dickens's attempt to kind of reinvent himself from

being a jobbing parliamentary reporter to being a kind of best-selling novelist. I'd written about

...