"The book I didn't know I desperately needed." - LORRAINE KELLY

"Witty and wise - How the Female Body Works is a wonderful blend of science and humour. I laughed, I learned, and I felt seen. A must-read for anyone in a female body - and anyone who knows one." - Dr Charlotte Gribbin, Consultant Aesthetic & Regenerative Medicine Physician

'Technically, we're close, my body and I. We go everywhere together. And yet, I know little about how it actually works...'


How much do any of us really know about our bodies? We know, for example, that women live longer than men, but why? We are told our brains are better at multi-tasking, but is that true? What exactly are hormones? Like: what do they look like? What's the point of PMS? Why are women twice as likely as men to develop Alzheimer's? And what's the deal with things like osteoporosis - why are our bones so damn fragile?


For years, award-winning journalist Polly Vernon drove her body around like it was a car - and she had zero interest in the manual. This book charts her mission to lift the bonnet, have a good old rummage and find out what's really going on. She talks to neuroscientists, academics, medics, midwives, gynaes, psychologists and physios. People who really know their stuff.


And so here it is, THE complete guide to the female body - head to toe, inside and out, physical and emotional - with reassuring advice on how to mitigate the ways it makes life trickier, along with notes of celebration for the ways it helps us out.


Full of facts and stories that will blow your mind, this is a book you'll want to pass on to every woman (and man) you know.

Polly Vernon has been a features writer, interviewer and columnist for 18 years. She now writes primarily for The Times and Grazia. She started as a junior writer on Minx, a riotous young woman's magazine, which launched in the late '90s as a female response to Loaded. Since being picked up as the Guardian's youngest ever Comments and Analysis columnist, she has written for every publication from Vogue to The Telegraph, and has interviewed everyone from David Cameron to Hugh Jackman via Donald Trump. And Take That. And One Direction. And Piers Morgan, for whom she has an enduring fondness. But don't tell anyone.