I would like to thank the Penguin Group for permission to use the quotation from Stranger in a Strange Land at the start of the introduction. Also, I would like to thank John Irving and the Cooke Agency for their permission to use the quotation from Last Night in Twisted River at the start of chapter one.
In writing this book, it has been my pleasure to discuss its slowly gestating contents with some real experts. First of all, my thanks go to Natasha Devon of bodygossip.org for bumping into me at the time when I was first planning the structure of this book. Professor Ali Mobasheri was extremely helpful in guiding me towards useful information about the effect of female body shape on disease, and Dr Nick Medford gave me lots of good tips about the science of the sense of inhabiting the body. Also, I would like to thank my five wonderful interviewees for putting up with my inept questioning. Finally, and as always, I would like to thank my agent Peter Tallack at the Science Factory for his continued help and support, and my editor at Portobello, Laura Barber, for her enthusiasm and putting up with my idiosyncratic text.