Stephanie Dowrick’s greatest gift is that she reminds us that life really matters. Her territory takes her from the profound to the everyday, but always with attention to the biggest question of all: ‘How should we live?’

Stephanie’s bestsellers, Intimacy + Solitude, The Universal Heart and Forgiveness + Other Acts of Love, are all books with a genuine power to change lives for the better. Here we meet her in a more personal and confidential frame of mind.

In chapters short enough to enjoy in a single reading, she offers her views on subjects as various as how to worry less and praise more; what happiness is - and how to achieve it; ageing appreciatively; why and how to meditate; when and whether to marry; why doubt can be useful and how burnout can be avoided.

She also speaks up persuasively for honesty, tolerance and peace in a world where those vital qualities can seem in short supply.

Free Thinking gives the reader the nearest thing to a series of brief, intense conversations with a woman who has thought deeply, writes beautifully and, even when she is confessing to her all-too human faults, never fails to uplift and inspire.