Published: 16:10 BST, 7 August 2026 | Updated: 08:38 BST, 8 August 2026
Professor Jason Arday claimed to have locked-in syndrome and testicular cancer in a book proposal for his memoir, it has emerged.
The anecdotes appeared in a 2024 proposal for Great and Unfortunate Things, which is due to be published next week, but not in the final version.
There are also other inconsistencies between the two versions of events in terms of dates and characters, US magazine The Atlantic reported.
In the proposal, Professor Arday, 41, recounted being struck by a car as a teenager and spending several months in a coma – whereas in the memoir he described simply finishing school and taking his exams at that time.
The proposal said he had locked-in syndrome during the coma, and witnessed doctors telling his parents that he would never recover and should be taken off life support 'as an act of mercy'.
The proposal said: 'As I will describe to readers in the book, these months afforded me another profoundly different way of perceiving the world.'
It added he awoke 'miraculously' from the coma, and spent a year 'relearning everything—how to walk, to talk'.
The proposal also referred to a bout of testicular cancer, rather than the two brain tumours described in the final version of the memoir.
Professor Jason Arday (pictured) claimed to have locked-in syndrome and testicular cancer in a book proposal for his memoir, it has emergedÂ
The anecdotes appeared in a 2024 proposal for Great and Unfortunate Things, which is due to be published next week, but not in the final version (pictured: Professor Jason Arday)
It comes after Cambridge launched an investigation following allegations of plagiarism by Professor Arday, who quit this week as Cambridge's youngest black professor over the 'personal cost' of the furore.
His other surprising claims have included being unable to write until the age of 18, running 30 marathons in 35 days, and raising ÂŁ5million for charities.
His book proposal, which surfaced this week, lays out many of the same events as his memoir but sometimes with slightly different dates and details.
In an anecdote about a group of boys beating him up, they were four years older in the proposal than in the book.