Acknowledgements

WRITING THIS BOOK AFFORDED me many opportunities to test its arguments by confronting uncertainty, anxiety, the prospect of failure, and occasionally blind terror. I am grateful that I didn’t have to rely on positive-thinking affirmations to deal with this, but benefited instead from the skills and time of some extraordinary people. At Canongate, I thank above all my remarkably Stoical editor Nick Davies, whose talents vastly improved the text, and his colleagues, including Norah Perkins, Angela Robertson, and Octavia Reeve; Mitzi Angel at Faber & Faber in New York provided enormously invaluable input. To say that I am indebted to my agent Claire Conrad would be a comical understatement; I am grateful to everyone at Janklow & Nesbit, in particular Tina Bennett for early guidance and encouragement. As well as all the named interviewees, I thank the following people for advice, contacts, comments on chapters, or places to write: Cyntia Barrera, Tor Butler-Cole, Jeremy Chatzky, Clar Ni Chonghaile, Catherine Crawford, Joanna Ebenstein, Jeffy Gibbins, Julia Greenberg, Debbie Joffe-Ellis, Kenneth Folk, Solana Larsen, Jeff Mikkelson, Mac Montandon, Salvador Oguín and Joanna Tuckman. At the Guardian, for assistance or forbearance in differing measures, I thank Emma Cook, Janine Gibson, Clare Margetson, Emily Wilson and Becky Gardiner. Ian Katz doesn’t really do forbearance, but I’m grateful to him for much else.

Since this book grew initially from the topics explored in my column for Guardian Weekend magazine, its ultimate source, as with so many ideas, is the mind of Merope Mills, the magazine’s editor. Others deserving of much thanks include Esther Addley, Anne Bernstein and my friends from York, of whom I’ll unfairly single out here Adam Ormond, Rurik Bradbury, Abigail Gibson, Daniel Weyman, Sally Weyman, Rachael Burnett and Robin Parmiter. Emma Brockes continued her indispensable service as outboard brain, and was much more help than any motivational seminar.

I’m by no means sure that it was a wise happiness strategy on the part of Heather Chaplin to decide to embrace this project as wholeheartedly as she did, but it made an incalculable difference. For this and many other reasons I am ridiculously lucky to know her.