There has been no small amount of schadenfreude over Jordan Peterson’s slide from public view. Famous for flagellating ‘social justice types’ and telling the Left to ‘grow the hell up’, he admitted last year that he had been struggling with benzodiazepine addiction. This was met with cruel amusement by some, who found it ironic that a man who came to fame teaching people to take responsibility for themselves had been propped up by Valium the whole time. But the shouts of ‘fraud’ that followed are both unbecoming and wide of the mark. As he explains in the ‘Overture’ to this new book, the drugs were a response first to severe health issues then to his wife’s near-fatal bout of cancer, and his dependence on them left him close to death as well.

Back in the limelight now with this sequel to his multimillion-selling 12 Rules for Life, Peterson seems determined to steer clear of the politics that got him into trouble the first time round. In the few public appearances he has made since his recovery, he has sidestepped questions relating to