This isn't one of those books you can easily dip in and out of – it requires you to think and consider, then possibly re-read sections. So I think the only title it’s ever really had was Fortitude but yes, it took a while to get to there. When Peter leaves school and comes home, he realises with cold horror that his cackling grandfather and demonic violent father are waiting eagerly for him to fall into their bullying, violent, cruel ways. No - Walpole had a way to convince his readers that they must daily, hourly, moment-by-enervating-moment, TAKE UP THEIR CROSSES and bear life's low blows head on. So the reason why I use that synonym, fortitude, is because there is a weariness and, you know, look, if you go into LinkedIn, there’s no shortage of people offering you resilience courses, slides of how to be resilient.

And then like, you know, I’ve got one friend who I show these things to, and he took about three weeks to come back, but he gave me some thoughts and it’s like that revealing it is such a late stage for the art of writing that it’s sort of interesting, it is, it’s an exploratory process. As humans we often attempt to learn from those who are successful, and ignore the less fortunate many. They have a son together, but then everything seems to unravel, and by the end of the novel, Peter must come to terms with the way life really is, the fickle dealings of fame and fate, a realization that he has let go of people who truly loved him, and a determination nevertheless to persevere through it all.This book introduces us to young Peter Westcott, who overcomes a difficult childhood in Cornwall and eventually makes good as an author in London. They compared them to people who went to the Olympics with Team GB but won a bronze, and what they found was, these super-elites, these gold medal-winners, 100 percent of them had experienced a significant moment of childhood trauma. It is important to view success within its much broader context and consider the multiple factors to which we often cast a blind eye. And I think understanding that resilience isn’t this magical individualistic thing, it’s this collective thing. His podcast Eat Sleep Work Repeat has been an Apple number one business podcast and has featured psychologists, neuroscientists and workplace experts including Daniel Pink, Scott Galloway, Noreena Hertz and Rutger Bregman.

Mr Zanti has a powerful aura of mysteriousness, but I think this is subsmumed by the anarchists’ plot, rather than the supernatural per se.So I think before we leave people with the kind of the bad news that this is a really, really bad situation, what are the things that are in our control, that we can do to have more fortitude, to be more fortitudinous? And so firstly, you know, if we’re going to try and understand resilience, understanding the role that our identity plays in that is a really critical part. Three words that sum up this cracking read, which offers a timely – and much needed - challenge to the traditional definition on resilience’.

As with personal control, a sense of identity can have implications for physical and psychological health.

What makes this a true novel of 1913, if you ignore the now timeless Gothic bits and the David Copperfield plot, is the secret socialist circle and the anarchist bomb plot.