Daily Rituals: How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration, and Get to Work 2024 NEUF

A trove of entertaining anecdote Daily Telegraph

It will fascinate anyone who has ever wondered of their artistic heroes: how the devil did they manage? Guardian

How is a novel written? A masterpiece painted? A symphony composed?

Benjamin Franklin took daily naked air baths and Toulouse-Lautrec painted in brothels. Edith Sitwell worked in bed, and George Gershwin composed at the piano in pyjamas. Freud worked sixteen hours a day, but Gertrude Stein could never write for more than thirty minutes, and F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in gin-fuelled bursts - he believed alcohol was essential to his creative process.

Here are the working routines of more than a hundred and sixty of the greatest philosophers, writers, composers and artists ever to have lived, who, whether by amphetamines or alcohol, headstands or boxing, made time and got to work.

A fascinating little book Financial Times

A delightful book, full of quirks and oddities Literary Review