Terry Waite, as many people will remember, was famous for being held hostage in Beirut for almost five years in the late 1980s.

As envoy for the Church of England he was trying to negotiate the release of another hostage when he was seized. For the majority of his imprisonment he was held in darkness in solitary confinement, with guards instructed not to speak to him. Almost 30 years on from that experience, Waite continues to work through understanding what it was within him that enabled him to mentally survive his experience, and the premise of this book is Waite's attempt to marry his experience of solitude with that experienced by people from a wide spectrum of places and circumstances (excluding those who have chosen a solitary life for religious reasons, about whom he felt much has already been written).

The book includes an intriguing cast of characters, including amongst others tough farmers who had chosen an isolated life in the Australian bush and the double secret agent George Blake. Whilst it read as a interesting travelogue of sorts, I don't think Waite successfully achieved his goal of reaching any enlightening depths on the topic of solitude. With Blake, for instance, he got caught up in his fascination with Blake's tales of how he became a double agent and whether he regretted that choice. It was certainly interesting to read, but it felt like the question of solitude was latched onto it as a bit of an afterthought to try to remain to topic. The same applied to many other stories - they were interesting for their own sake, but they really didn't get under the skin of solitude at all. Some were quite random and so brief (Myra Hindley, the notorious English child murderer, and Lana Peters, Stalin's daughter) that they read more as moments of name-dropping than anything else.

Having said that, I did enjoy reading this book. Terry Waite has led a unique and fascinating life, and it was an interesting assortment of people to read about. When I heard him speak at an event last week he mentioned that he's written six books across a number of genres books and has been trying to discover his writing voice or style. I think this writing naivety was very obvious in this book, with Waite overstretching himself both as an investigative journalist and as an armchair psychologist, but that aside I enjoyed my short trot around the globe with him.

3 stars - interesting,but would have benefited from some further editorial polishing. ( )