Eating alone isn’t good for you – but you do get to read at the table

Research shows that eating on your own at home is a prime indicator of unhappiness but it does have its plus points

Some advice never goes out of fashion. Live Alone and Like It: The Art of Solitary Refinementis a cheery little volume that was first published in 1936, and remains in print today. Written by Marjorie Hillis, an editor at American Vogue, and a bestseller in its time, it was aimed at a new generation of women who, whether by design or default, suddenly found themselves living the single life in tiny flats and rooms in cities in both the US and Britain. I don’t live alone, but I look at it quite often. It’s one of those books that, in certain moods, works on you like a really good cocktail or a blast of exactly the right music: an antidote, if not to despair, then to the existential angst that dogs us all every now and again.

Hillis covers everything: soft furnishings, what to keep on your drinks trolley, the matter of boyfriends and whether they should stay or go. But it’s the chapter about eating alone I like best. Among its pages, you won’t find any dreary recipes for one; though she rightly regards corned beef hash as a very fine thing indeed, she would rather leave that sort of stuff to stodgier, less inspiriting writers than herself.

Related: The perils of a table for one