Bloomsbury buys Henry Scowcroft’s ‘professional and personal’ cancer memoir

A memoir billed as a “popular-science detective story” by science writer Henry Scowcroft has gone to Bloomsbury imprint Green Tree, focusing on his fiancée’s experience of advanced bladder cancer.

Scowcroft, an award-winning science and features writer for charity Cancer Research UK, has spent 16 years reporting from the “coal-face of cancer research,” Bloomsbury said. In 2016, his fiancée Zarah was diagnosed with advanced bladder cancer.

Green Tree publisher Charlotte Croft has acquired World English Language  (including e-book) rights for Cross Everything: A personal journey into the evolution of cancer, from James Wills at Watson, Little Ltd. Bloomsbury’s health and wellbeing imprint Green Tree will publish Cross Everything on the 29th October 2020 in hardback.

“In Cross Everything, Henry tells the story of Zarah’s illness from the unique perspective of someone for whom cancer is now both professional and personal,” Bloomsbury said. “Since Zarah’s death Henry has worked closely with some of the UK’s top researchers, using the latest scientific techniques to find out exactly how Zarah’s cancer evolved to outwit her immune system, providing a unique, personal perspective on the current understanding of this devastating and wide-reaching disease.”

Croft said: “Cross Everything is a heart-wrenching memoir, a fascinating popular-science detective story, and a witty and at times darkly comical take on a disease that half of us will experience at some point in our lives. This moving tribute to Zarah is a poignant reminder of the importance of cancer research. We are incredibly proud to be publishing Henry Scowcroft’s revealing, moving, and ultimately tragic, memoir.”

Scowcroft added: “I’m over the moon to be working with Charlotte and the team at Green Tree to bring Cross Everything to life. Throughout Zarah’s illness, we drew some comfort and hope from the fact that, thanks to my day job, the disease wasn’t as terrifying as it might have been. But there was also so much I didn’t know about the day-to-day reality of cancer. I hope I can draw all of that together in the book to produce something that can demystify what this truly awful disease really is, and that telling Zarah’s story – and the story of how her tumour evolved – will help others who are going through something similar.”