All The Lonely People: From the Richard and Judy bestselling author of Half a World Away comes a warm, life-affirming story – the perfect read for these times

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Along the way Hubert stumbles across a second chance at love, renews a cherished friendship, and finds himself roped into an audacious community scheme that seeks to end loneliness once and for all . And the powerful spirit of a poor young girl being abandoned to her future with only a red dress and her wits to keep her alive. But it is a completely different song than the other one that sounds slapped together in a few takes without a thought for the meaning.

In cities such as Lyon in France, Deventer in the Netherlands and Cleveland in Ohio, nursing homes or local authorities are offering students free or cheap rent in exchange for helping out with housework.Someone who is socially isolated isn’t necessarily lonely, nor is a lonely person necessarily socially isolated.

I get this image of someone sitting in a run down, dark room looking out a window, which is a rather depressing scene, and the door bell rings. While anyone can experience loneliness, certain risk factors increase our chances of severe and lasting loneliness that can affect our mental health. Yet last year a review of 15 papers concluded that evidence to date was too weak to support any conclusions about the programmes’ effectiveness.

This sounds crazy, but I'm a great fan of Dickens, and whenever I hear this song, I think of Miss Havisham. Hubert’s story is told in flashbacks, from the racism he endures on his arrival in London from Jamaica, his marriage to Joyce, a white woman whose family disowns her for marrying a black man, to the birth of his children. A sharp drop in how often American teenagers go out without their parents began in 2009, around when mobile phones became ubiquitous. After a couple of years of it being out, we'd do shows where, when we played that song, there would be a standing ovation in the middle of it.