Sophie Kinsella was diagnosed with brain cancer, then wrote a book about it

Sitting beneath a skylight on a brilliant Sunday morning, Sophie Kinsella called to mind a posh, slightly weary matriarch who might appear in one of her novels.

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Flowing leopard skirt check. Devoted husband who looks like American actor Harrison Ford check. Town house near the Thames with chocolate bars on a silver platter in the living room check and check.

Then Kinsella lifted her chestnut hair to show a bald patch left by treatment for a brain tumour. It a glioblastoma, the most aggressive kind.

"I couldn't say the word 'cancer' for a long time," she said. "There's still a residual cringing, fearful disbelief." Kinsella, 54, is the English author of 33 novels, many of them No. 1 bestsellers, including Confessions Of A Shopaholic (2001), which led to eight spin-offs and a 2009 movie.

Her novels have been translated into 40 languages in more than 60 countries. They have sold around 48 million copies worldwide, including seven books that Kinsella wrote under her given name, Madeleine Wickham.

But, over the course of an interview that ran the gamut from gutting to upbeat, it was clear that the only numbers that matter now are closer to home. Kinsella and her husband, Mr Henry Wickham, have been married for 33 years.

They have four sons and a daughter, ranging in age from 12 to 28.

Kinsella's symptoms started in 2022, with a series of falls. "My legs stopped working," she said. "I started lurching around. I couldn't walk up stairs properly." She had had emergency gallbladder surgery - "At the time, that was big news. Little did we know" - and recovery was slow. She had headaches. She was breathless and confused.

She was behaving "slightly strangely", Mr Wickham said. For instance, Kinsella gave him a pair of scissors and asked him to cut all her hair off. He declined.

Kinsella had been "scanned everywhere because of this and because of that", he said, but answers were elusive.