For most of her career, Julie Burchill has been troubled by a certain irony, which ultimately caught up to her in December 2024 in the most terrible way. For decades, she ridiculed what she called the “worried well”—the careful, the precise, the people who kept their appointments and counted their units. She had not spent a single night in the hospital since giving birth at age 25. She had never even had a cold and had made it through the pandemic without donning a mask. Then, on Friday the 13th, she began to trip and fall when walking, whether drunk or sober, and she secretly drove herself to Brighton’s A&E without telling her husband.
They found an epidural abscess, which is a pus filled pocket that had inadvertently formed around her spinal cord. As was the case with her, this kind of infection often stays undiagnosed until it’s nearly too late. By the time she got to the Royal Sussex County Hospital, she thought she might only have a few days remaining. Concurrent operations were carried out by surgeons. There was never any debate about her survival until they got to her. She was not guaranteed to be able to walk again after the surgery, and more than a year later, she still isn’t.
| Information | Details |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Julie Burchill |
| Born | 3 July 1959, Bristol, England |
| Age | 66 (2025) |
| Profession | Journalist, columnist, novelist |
| Known For | New Musical Express, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator; novel Sugar Rush |
| Condition | Epidural abscess (spinal infection), diagnosed December 2024 |
| Key Event | Emergency spinal surgery, 13 December 2024 |
| Current Status | Uses a wheelchair; may not walk again; writing regularly on Substack |
| Spouse | Daniel Raven |
five weeks at the Brighton hospital. Then, after living for four months on the ground floor of a rehabilitation center tucked away in West Sussex, she fiercely refused to talk about anything but the basement, distrusting euphemism in a way that only a lifelong writer could. She went back to her modest Art Deco apartment in Hove in May 2025, where she had a wheelchair that she would later name Wendy and a permanent catheter that she called Catty. There’s a very Burchill vibe about naming the indignities. It’s a way to keep ownership of the page even after the body stops participating.
The flat is the part that you still have. With grab rails, beige plastic, and the visual language of decay, she had been afraid to return and find it converted into an invalid’s quarters. Rather, she found that her husband, Daniel, had subtly altered it by relocating beds, taking out doors, and making room for wheels, so she could reach the window catch from her chair and open it to the sea breeze. A small thing. Clearly, that was really crucial. Even though the wheelchair chips paint from the doorframes as she moves through, she writes that she doesn’t mind the little piles of plaster on the floor because they are proof that she is still here.
Not every situation has been straightforwardly survivable. When the weight of her new life became too much for her to handle in the spring, Burchill made an attempt at suicide. Later on, she wrote about this encounter with the same cold, flat sincerity that she uses for everything else. Some of her readers have mentioned that when they read her columns, they can’t help but notice a silent worry beneath the comedy. She portrays herself as powerful, perhaps overtly so. From the outside, it’s difficult to determine whether it is a type of armor or the whole truth. Both, most likely.
The text remains unchanged. Her Substack series, which she describes as Halfling, half person, and half wheels, is an ongoing series of pieces that she wrote from her flat after being admitted to the hospital. These essays fluctuate between being horrifying and amusing. She describes the long scar down her back, the UTIs, the catheter, and how the stress of it all made her hair diminish. She talks about how awful the term “invalid” is and how she is now exactly that. Its lack of self pity is one of the things that makes it land. The former NME firebrand, who once said that her body resembled an amusement arcade rather than a temple, is now painstakingly recording what transpires after the arcade closes.
It’s strange to watch a writer whose whole personality was built around movement, energy, and indignation settle into a calm register. She now rests this assessment on experience rather than theory. She is fully aware of how society fusses over mental health while offering the physically challenged little more than lip service. The majority of what Burchill has said during the last forty years is disagreed with by many people. Seeing someone talk about the worst year of her life, week after week, is unquestionably unsettling.
Simply put, it’s unclear where this will go. The physical prognosis, which tends toward lifelong wheelchair use, is easier to predict than the emotional one. She’ll definitely keep writing it down. Sitting at the window with the sea air flowing in and being honest about a body she no longer recognizes could be the most honest work she has ever done for a woman who formerly dismissed health issues as a sign of weakness.
i) https://hookswimschool.co.uk/julie-burchill-illness-a-wheelchair-a-spine-and-a-ghost-in-her-flat/
ii) https://www.newsminimalist.com/articles/julie-burchill-navigates-life-in-a-wheelchair-after-spinal-infection-b23be611
iii) https://privatetherapyclinics.co.uk/celebrities/julie-burchill-illness-update-living-through-a-medical-and-personal-turning-point/
iv) https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5250203-julie-burchill-legendary-writer-is-unwell?flipped=1&page=1