Aged 11, Christopher Coleridge suddenly developed a stutter. After a decade of agony, he discovered a cure
What do Demosthenes, President Biden, Ed Sheeran and I have in common? A stutter. We are a select bunch: about one in every hundred. Although nowadays I rarely stutter, like an evil gremlin it still lurks in the background, ready to ambush me when I am tired or stressed. Stuttering is now understood to be a neurological condition, meaning that the wires in the speech-related parts of the brain are not connected quite correctly. It is not because of a psychological flaw or a sign of character weakness. Most children who stutter will grow out of it, but if it develops into adulthood, then it is almost impossible to cure. My stutter started at boarding school in West Sussex when I was 11, some 40 years ago. I am still not sure what brought it on. Perhaps there’s a genetic factor, since a great-aunt is remembered to have stuttered. The...
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