The Society of Timid Souls

It is an inspiring, revelatory and often tear-jerking investigation of courage in all its forms, from battlefields and bullrings to earthquakes and opera houses. In 1942, a pianist from Manhattan convened the inaugural meeting of an extraordinary new fraternity, which promised to inoculate stage fright sufferers against the terrors that afflicted them. The venture was an astonishing success.

They called it The Society of Timid Souls. Seventy years later, as global anxiety levels are higher than ever before, courage has become a virtue in crisis. We are all Timid Souls now.

So Polly Morland reconvenes the Society, and sets out on a fact-finding mission. From the woman who saved her baby by performing her own caesarean section, to the surfer who took on a murderous sea, by way of freedom fighters, public speakers and emergency services workers, she seeks the truth about what true courage looks - and feels - like. From frontline to skyscraper, from mountain peak to suburban street, hospital ward to blazing inferno, the journey takes in philosophy, literature, propaganda and popular culture, as Morland sets out to discover what courage really means, and how a Timid Soul may become a brave one.