About the Author

Clare Chambers was born in 1966, attended school in Croydon, read English at Oxford and wrote her first novel while she was living in New Zealand. Clare's novel Learning to Swim won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award in 1998. She now lives in Kent with her husband and young family.

Reviews

A pleasure to read because it's packed with new (to me) information and ideas and so absorbingly readable. A must-read for psychotherapists, doctors and everyone else who enjoys connecting ideas -- Philippa Perry (Twitter)
A barnstormer. Intact is a timely, challenging, troubling work. Clare Chambers argues that the unmodified body is valuable in itself, that it is a morally privileged baseline, and that it is - and should be - a site of political resistance against unwanted social pressures to modify * TLS *
Moving and huge in scope ... it has made me feel better about how I feel about my body -- New Statesman * Rachel Cunliffe *
A nuanced, subtle and thoughtful book . . . anyone who is remotely interested in these topics will get a lot out of it and understand just how important this debate is and how it touches on our lives often without our even noticing it -- Julian Baggini
Intact shocks and startles with real human stories but is both compassionate and challenging, warmly human and coolly rigorous. It left me questioning so many assumptions - what is natural, or normal? Who should decide what's best for other people's bodies, and how? I am now thinking afresh about how I live in my own body, in a world where, as Clare Chambers argues, nobody's body is ever allowed to be good enough, just as it is -- Timandra Harkness, author of Big Data
In this cogently argued and insightful book, Clare Chambers calls for us all to reject the pervasive messages that our bodies aren't good enough and instead to accept and value the bodies we have. Intact is an essential read for all educators, policy makers, researchers and all those ready to call time on the beauty myths -- Nichola Rumsey OBE, Professor, UWE Bristol
A wonderfully rich book. It's not easy to combine complex, rigorous philosophy with clear and engaging prose. But Clare Chambers pulls this off brilliantly here -- David Edmonds, author of Wittgenstein's Poker
Essential reading for anyone with a body -- whether you love your body, hate your body, or fall somewhere in between, Clare Chambers will reshape how you think about it. Timely and trenchant, Intact recovers a seemingly lost principle: bodies matter. The significance of the material body for social and political justice, especially for historically oppressed groups, finds a stunning defense in these pages. You, your body, however it is, is good just as it is: a simple, but powerful statement of the fundamental equality of all persons. -- Lori Watson, Professor of Philosophy, University of Washington at St Louis
A bold and brilliant book. Clare Chambers lucidly challenges the unquestioned assumptions of our visual culture. Intact is unique in its breadth, considering body modifications from make-up, to body building, to surgery and tattooing. She does not question the individual's right to change their body, but does question the social positioning of such choices. For the naming of 'shametenance' alone this book should be a bestseller -- Heather Widdows, author of Perfect Me
Intact is humane, generous, thought-provoking and sensible (great to see a mainstream philosopher discussing disability & Deafness too) -- Tom Shakespeare (Twitter)
A beautifully written and thoughtful push back against all the people and powers that have made us, as a society, feel that our bodies need to be altered * Metro *