Art Against Despair

This is a collection of the world’s most consoling and uplifting images, accompanied by small essays that talk about the works in a way that offers us comfort and inspiration. The images in the book range wildly across time and space: from ancient to modern art, east to west, north to south, taking in photography, painting, abstract and figurative art.

All the images have been carefully chosen to help us with a particular problem we might face: a broken heart, a difficulty at work, the meanness of others, the challenges of family and friends… We’re invited to look at art with unusual depth and then find our way towards new hope and courage.

Too often, we bottle up our anxieties or try to avoid looking at them directly. We are ashamed of how worried we are and end up feeling isolated and yet more worried. None of this is necessary. Anxiety is deeply normal and, like so much else that troubles our minds, it can be understood and brought under our control. We all deserve to wake up every day without a sense of foreboding.

This is a guide to anxiety: why we feel it, how we experience it when it strikes and what we can do when we come under its influence. Across a series of essays that look at the subject from a number of angles, the tone is helpful, compassionate and, in the best sense, practical.

We have suffered for too long under the rule of anxiety. Here – at last – is a pathway to a calmer, more compassionate and more light-hearted future.