It seems quite hard to find pleasure or joy in our society any more. Lord Layard, the government’s advisor on happiness (happy people, apparently, are more likely to support the current government), believes that our concentration on materialism and status at the expense of family and wider relationships has contributed to the failure of ‘subjective wellbeing’.

‘If we want to achieve a higher level of happiness...we have to pay a lot more attention to relationships,’ he says, ‘and not be so willing to sacrifice them for the sake of greater income or productivity.’

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