In a beautiful, intimate and personal book, Julia Baird investigates happiness; specifically, how we can find, and more importantly hold onto, that quality of internal happiness - 'the light within' - that she calls 'phosphorescence'.

Over the last decade, we have become better at knowing what brings us contentment, well-being and joy. We know, for example, that there are a few core truths to science of happiness. We know that being kind and altruistic makes us happy; that turning off devices, talking to people, forging relationships, living with meaning and delving into the concerns of others, is our best chance at achieving happiness.



But how do we retain happiness? It often slips out of our hands as quickly as we find it. So, when we are exposed to, or learn, good things, how do we continue to burn with them? How do we continue to glow, in the muck and grit of a daily existence full of disappointments and disturbing lack of control over many of the things that matter most - finite relationships, fragile health, fraying economies. How can we become, in Julia's word, phosphorescent?