Sneeze

On a warm Wednesday in July 1946, a brave group of volunteers got off a train at Salisbury Station to catch colds. They were joining the recently established Common Cold Unit’s single mission: to get to grips with the mysterious entity called the common cold.

They were the first of many. A new band of volunteers would arrive every week for the next 44 years.

The CCU made enormous strides toward demystifying the common cold, but its most important insight was the sheer complexity of the mystery it had taken on. The common cold was a much more complex mystery than anyone realised back in 1946. Colds can be caused by over 200 different viruses, albeit indirectly; if a cold makes us feel awful, it’s less because of the damage done by the virus than because of our own misdirected immune response.

Thanks to the CCU’s volunteers and scientists, working in collaboration with scientists at many other institutions around the world, we now have a few things we can do about colds, ranging from protecting ourselves as individuals to modifying the built environment to be less conducive to cold transmission.

Sneeze is the story of what we know about colds today, how we came to know it and, perhaps most importantly, what we can do with what we know.

Release dates are:

5th March 2026: UK hardcover, ebook and audio.
28th April 2026: USA & Canada hardcover.
5th March 2027: UK paperback.

Available for preorder all good bookshops including: