I suppose the obvious next step for someone who has already written a book about how he gave up money for three years is to repudiate the technological advances of the modern world and write a book about living by candlelight and without running water. By conventional standards these are singular, not to say bizarre, choices, but good luck to Mark Boyle if they bring him contentment and enable him to write as eloquently and memorably as he does.

Having briefly resumed handling lucre, Boyle set off for the west of Ireland with enough of it to buy a small farmhouse and some land in a green and empty part of County Galway. Modest the farmhouse was, but not modest enough, since it had sockets and switches