My maddening battle with chronic fatigue syndrome: ‘On my worst days, it feels almost demonic’

I suffered with my mystery illness for decades before gaining a diagnosis. Could retraining my brain be the answer? At the Croydon secondary school I attended in the late 1990s, the deputy headmistress was a stocky woman with a military haircut who patrolled the corridors in voluminous outfits patterned in shades of brown. The outfits were much discussed, not charitably, by the teenage girls in her charge – as was her voice, which made you think of a blunt knife being drawn across a rough su...

By Hermione Hoby