Between iPods, building works, music-blasting restaurants and endless traffic noise, the place for quiet grows ever smaller. In Pursuit of Silence gives context to our increasing sense that noise pollution is an environmental catastrophe. Travelling and listening to a host of incredible characters, including doctors, neuroscientists, acoustical engineers, monks and aggrieved citizens, in his book George Prochnik examines why we began to be so loud as a society and what it is that gets lost when we can no longer find quiet.
George was in conversation with consultant psychiatrist Simon Lewis for the Friends of Highgate Library.