Shrinking Violets: The Secret Life of Shyness

Our success as a species is built on sociability, so shyness in humans should be an anomaly. But it's actually remarkably common - we all know what it's like to cringe in embarrassment, stand tongue-tied at the fringe of an unfamiliar group, or flush with humiliation if we suddenly become the unwelcome centre of attention. In Shrinking Violets, Joe Moran explores the hidden world of shyness, providing insights on everything from timidity in lemon sharks to the role of texting in Finnish love affairs. As he seeks answers to the questions that shyness poses - Why are we shy? Can we overcome it? Does it define us? - he uncovers the fascinating stories of the men and women who were 'of the violet persuasion', from Charles Darwin to Agatha Christie, and from Tove Jansson to Nick Drake. In their stories - often both heart-breaking and inspiring - and through the myriad ways scientists and thinkers have tried to explain and cure shyness, Moran finds a hopeful conclusion. To be shy, he decides, is not simply a burden - it is also a gift, a different way of seeing the world that can be both enriching and inspiring.

Review: An intriguing, poignant and passionate story about shyness in humans and animals. I was captivated from start to finish. * Joanna Bourke *

A probing, surprising and continually alert book ... Moran is the razor-edge analyst of reticence, a virtuoso reader of those who hope to evade the eye. * Francis O'Gorman, author of WORRYING *

Whether you're boldly outgoing or reticent and self-effacing, you'll find something to inspire, inform or surprise in this thoughtful, beautifully written and vividly detailed cultural history. * Susan Cain, author of QUIET *

This remarkable compendium of shyness, vivid and insightful, provides both a history of diffidence and a compelling account of its cultural and psychological complexity. Whether discussing embarrassment, stammering, stage fright, or reticence, Moran considers the impact of shyness on creativity and its myriad contributions to fiction, art, and music. Beautifully written, appealingly candid, and thoroughly engaging, Shrinking Violets deserves a very wide readership. * Christopher Lane, author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness *

This is a probing, surprising, and continually alert book about a feeling that is well-known - even when it doesn't want to be - yet almost never discussed. Moran, with beautifully shaped prose, ruminates on cultural attitudes to, and representations of, shyness. He is generous about his own shyness, and forensically alert to what being shy more generally means and what it doesn't. Shyness is just there, he concludes: loaded with potential interpretations but not defined by them. Examining a huge amount of cultural material-from sociological reports to popular music, from Virginia Woolf to Desert Island Discs - Moran is the razor-edge analyst of reticence, a virtuoso reader of those who hope to evade the eye. -- Francis O'Gorman, author of WORRYING: A Literary and Cultural History

Joe Moran's excellent Shrinking Violets is an invitation to enter the strange and wonderful world of shyness, an emotion experienced by everyone from Charles Darwin to Japanese teenagers. Whether you're boldly outgoing or reticent and self-effacing, you'll find something to inspire, inform or surprise in this thoughtful, beautifully written and vividly detailed cultural history. -- Susan Cain, bestselling author of QUIET and co-founder of Quiet Revolution

Praise for Joe Moran: 'Moran has fast become Britain's foremost explorer and explainer of the disregarded -- Juliet Gardiner, author of 'Wartime: Britain 1939-1945'

Joe Moran is the most perceptive and original observer of British life that we have -- Matthew Engel

At last! The view from the sofa. A history of television that reflects the lives of those who watch it - and that means pretty well all of us. Informative, evocative, funny, moving, sometimes even startling, Joe Moran, Britain's premier historian of the everyday, has pulled it off again. -- Juliet Gardiner

All that time we were watching television Joe Moran was thinking about it. This wonderful book is packed with stories and characters, shot through with Moran's customary affection for the ordinary and the overlooked. A beautiful study of that flickering box that keeps us enthralled. -- Sam West

Joe Moran is a wonderfully gifted social historian, with a ravenous capacity for research ... He is particularly good at overturning the bogus collective memories to which television so often gives rise ... His sources from diaries and memoirs are rich and varied ... Armchair Nation offers rich pickings for those, like me, who struggle to remember (everything we've watched). -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday *

One of the most entertaining things about the book - and there are many - is finding out how many of the things we think we know about television are either myths, or simply hogwash ... As well as being consistently perceptive in his observations, Moran has done something I would confidently have thought impossible - he's made the history of British TV as dramatic as it is fun. -- John Preston * Sunday Telegraph *

A formidable historical analysis of the gogglebox ... Moran's achievement is remarkable given the breadth of subject matter ... Extensive research is lightly worn -- Arifa Akbar * Independent *

Moran is scholarly but welcoming ... But in its insights, clarity and honest wit, it's hard to imagine a more engaging book on a subject everyone already thinks they know about. As in the best TV itself, you find yourself learning something new with almost no effort. -- Phil Hogan * Observer *

Quite wonderful, beautifully written ... it reveals a seated nation, something which has never happened before. There is nothing like it. -- Dr Ronald Blythe

Armchair Nation is as compulsive as any soap, as informative as any documentary and as funny as any sitcom. Moran knows and loves his subject, exploring well-covered territory as well as the less familiar with wit and perception. -- Harry Venning * The Stage *