The books I’d written in my 20s and early 30s were quite bleak.” Back then, he was published by Jonathan Cape and was trying to write books tailored to that storied imprint he calls them “karaoke Ian McEwan”. “It didn’t become a bestseller, but it was the first optimistic book I’d written. “The Humans was the book where I felt finally, truly confident in myself as a writer,” says Haig. He hasn’t let the remarkable success that has come his way over the past five years go to his head – or indeed his toes. He must be seriously wealthy and could be wearing silk socks, but he isn’t. I like the worn-out sock, because his books now attract six-figure advances he received £600,000 for his 2020 novel The Midnight Library, which recently clocked up its millionth sale. He is padding around in his socks, through one of which his big toe is peeping. The music-loving, eco-evangelising Haig is wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with the words “No music on a dead planet”. Today is a good day, despite my lunchtime appearance to discuss his new book, prosaically titled The Comfort Book. Haig – novelist, self-help guru, periodic endurer of depression and anxiety – needs these colours, that view, this sun, even the statement-making front door. “We bought the house for that view,” he says as he answers the door, which is painted turquoise. I f you peer down the hill from Matt Haig’s immaculate townhouse in Brighton, you can see the sea, which today is shimmeringly blue under a hot sun.

Reasons to stay alive pages