Current Issue #488

The Society of Timid Souls

The Society of Timid Souls

Polly Morland / Profile Books

  The Society of Timid Souls In response to a perceived pandemic of contemporary anxiety, documentary film maker Polly Morland tackles, in her first book, the question: can one learn to brave? Are acts of bravery instinctive, or can we be trained to respond to certain situations courageously? Morland’s inspiration is the ‘Society of Timid Souls’, an obscure 1940s support group for stage-frightened performers. The link between the Society’s antics and the straightforward investigation that Morland undertakes is a little stretched; this, and the author’s tendency to long-windedness make for slow-going at times. While the majority of choices for courageous interviewees – soldiers, firefighters, tight-rope walkers – tell familiar stories, some of the accounts of bravery, such as one man’s jaw-droppingly compassionate intervention in an attempted London train bombing, are the highlights of the book. Along the way Morland asks necessary definitive questions about bravery, and steers towards the thorny issue of whether a brave act is always a ‘good’ one. Can self-serving or immoral acts, however daring, be considered courageous? Is moral courage, defiant of tyranny, the ultimate kind? The argument could better acknowledge morality’s subjectivity, but arrives at hopeful conclusions about our ‘collective nerve’.

Get the latest from The Adelaide Review in your inbox

Get the latest from The Adelaide Review in your inbox