'Joe Moran is the most perceptive and original observer of British life that we have' Matthew Engel

Do you ever feel like a failure? Enter widely acclaimed observer of daily life Professor Joe Moran, not to tell you that everything will be OK in the end, but to reassure you that failure is an occupational hazard of being human. It is the small print in life's terms and conditions.

If You Should Fail is about how modern life, in a world of broadcasting success, makes us feel like failures, frauds and imposters; so we need more narratives of failures, and to see that not every failure can be made into a success - and that's OK.

It is encouraging to read that the seemingly invincible Leonardo da Vinci or Virginia Woolf, for example, felt like failures. Woolf wrote that she wanted to 'look life in the face and to know it for what it is'; the truth is cruel, but it can be loved.

Combining philosophy, psychology, history and literature, Moran's ultimately upbeat reflections on being human and his critique of how we live now offers comfort and hope. As Samuel Beckett advised, despair young and never look back . . .