Book review: The World I Fell Out Of, by Melanie Reid
This is an astonishing and riveting book. Melanie Reid was an award-winning journalist, once of the the Herald, then a columnist for the Times, when on Good Friday 2010, aged 52, she put her horse at a routine fence on a cross-country course, was thrown and fell awkwardly, breaking her neck and fracturing her lower back. An air ambulance took her to hospital in Glasgow. She was severely paralysed: tetraplegic. Little except her mind was still working. She could speak and record her words, and use a laptop with one finger. The Times gave her a weekly column. She gave it its title: “Spinal Column.”