“Thanks to speed,” says Honoré, “we live in the age of rage,” and in this bestselling book he surveys the crass contemporary mania for speed and the global backlash against it. According to the president of the World Economic Forum, we are moving from a world where the big eat the small to one where the fast eat the slow — if, that is, they don’t kill themselves in the process. The Japanese have a recognised syndrome of dropping dead from overwork at the office, “karoshi”, while global traffic fatalities are at 1.3m a year, and the United Nations predicts that cars will be the third leading cause of death by 2020.

People are waking up to slowing down, from the Japanese Sloth Club to the Italian-inspired Slow movement, which began with Slow Food and now embraces Slow Sex and even Slow Cities, with more than 30 member cities pledged to less traffic, more green spaces, better food — in short, a higher quality of life, which is what it’s really about. The whole business has a strongly metaphorical dimension, and as the author says, it “stands for everything that McDonald’s does not”. Nobody wants to get rid of air travel and computers, but they do want to control the rhythm and quality of their own lives, and Honoré surveys the situation as it affects eating, urbanism, health, medicine, sex, work, leisure and bringing up children. Engagingly written and filled with interesting detail, his book is a timely manifesto for a more civilised world.

IN PRAISE OF SLOW by Carl Honoré

(Orion £7.99)

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