This is a book to guide us to the best of life's small pleasures: everything from the delight of holding a child's hand to the enjoyment of disagreeing with someone, to the joy of the evening sky; an intriguing, evocative mix of small pleasures that will heighten our senses and return us to the world with new-found excitement and enthusiasm.

So often, we exhaust ourselves and the planet in a search for very large pleasures - while all around us lies a wealth of small pleasures, which - if only we paid more attention - could daily bring us solace and joy at little cost and effort. But we need some encouragement to focus our gaze.

This is a book to guide us to the best of life’s small pleasures: everything from the distinctive delight of holding a child’s hand to the enjoyment of disagreeing with someone to the joy of the evening sky; an intriguing, evocative mix of small pleasures that will heighten our senses and return us to the world with new-found excitement and enthusiasm.

Small pleasures turn out not to be small at all: they are points of access to the great themes of our lives. Every chapter puts one such moment of enjoyment under a kind of magnifying glass to find out what’s really going on in it and why it touches and moves us and makes us smile.