Do you ever suspect that a rich inner life matters more than constant company? In Solitude: A Return to the Self, psychiatrist Anthony Storr – voiced with great sensitivity by Justin Avoth – gently challenges the idea that fulfilment depends on coupledom and busy social calendars. Drawing on lives as various as Isaac Newton, Beethoven, Beatrix Potter and Rudyard Kipling, he shows how imagination, work and spiritual experience can turn time alone into a source of strength. His clear, unhurried prose and wide cultural range make the book feel fresh for readers living with today’s pressures to stay endlessly connected. Wise without being solemn, it speaks to anyone who has ever wondered whether solitude might be not a problem to cure, but a way of being fully oneself.

‘Brings excellent news for those who, whatever their reasons for doing so, live alone… Heartening’ Anita Brookner, The Spectator

‘Storr is incapable of writing an uninteresting paragraph’ The Sunday Times