Solitude has always had an ambivalent status: the capacity to enjoy being alone can make sociability bearable, but those predisposed to solitude are often viewe

'One day there is life . . . and then, suddenly, it happens there is death.' So begins Paul Auster's moving and personal meditation on fatherhood. The first sec

'A compassionate, wide-ranging study.' Terry Eagleton, The Guardian Despite 21st-century fears of a modern 'epidemic' of loneliness, its history has been sorely

Ours is an age where solitude tends to be discussed in the context of the 'problem of loneliness'. However in previous ages the capacity to seek fulfillment out

"Solitude was seminal in challenging the established belief that "interpersonal relationships of an intimate kind are the chief, if not the only, source of huma