One day Colin Grant's teenage brother Christopher failed to emerge from the bathroom His family broke down the door to find him unconscious on the floor None of their lives were ever the same again Christopher was diagnosed with epilepsy In A Smell of Burning Colin Grant tells the remarkable story of this strange & misunderstood disorder He shows us the famous people with epilepsy like Julius Caesar Joan of Arc & Vincent van Gogh the pioneering doctors whose extraordinary breakthroughs finally helped gain an understanding of how the brain works & through the tragic tale of his brother he considers the effect of epilepsy on his own life