Hubert Bird has a full life. He and his best friends, Dotty, Dennis, and Harvey, are always up to some kind of shenanigans. I had a bit of trouble with the name, and I’m always keen to get a name that sounds right.We were working with Eleanor Bron on [the film] Help! and I liked the name Eleanor; it was the first time I’d ever been involved with that name. I saw “Rigby” on a shop in Bristol when I was walking round the city one evening … so it became “Eleanor Rigby”. Last year, over 10 million people trusted us to help them with some of the biggest issues in their lives. Learn more about how we help. How your support helps

Other significant life events such as buying a house, having a baby or planning a wedding could also lead to feelings of loneliness. Karen is 55. She was recently widowed and lives alone while her son is at university. She was diagnosed with ME / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome two years ago. However, you do not have to be on your own all the time to feel lonely. Many people feel lonely in a relationship or while spending time with friends or family. One in four UK adults (25%) say they have felt lonely some or all of the time over the last month, according to a survey of 6,000 UK adults 2 commissioned by the Mental Health Foundation.A study published in 2010 using this scale estimated that 35% of Americans over 45 were lonely. Of these 45% had felt this way for at least six years; a further 32% for one to five years. In 2013 Britain’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), by dint of asking a simple question, classed 25% of people aged 52 or over as “sometimes lonely” with an extra 9% “often lonely”. That the problem exists is obvious; its nature and extent are not. Obesity can be measured on scales. But how to weigh an emotion? Researchers start by distinguishing several related conditions. Loneliness is not synonymous with social isolation (how often a person meets or speaks to friends and family) or with solitude (which implies a choice to be alone).

We also wanted to explore whether the public understood what could lead to people becoming deeply lonely for a long time, and whether they had stereotypes about loneliness. We found that people understand some of the factors which tend to increase people’s risk of loneliness. Donna’s story: Finding an outlet for your feelings is healthy We all know what loneliness feels like and feeling lonely from time to time is a normal part of life. But when loneliness is severe or lasts a long time, it can negatively affect our mental health.Yet loneliness is not especially a phenomenon of the elderly. The polling found no clear link between age and loneliness in America or Britain—and in Japan younger people were in fact lonelier. Young adults, and the very old (over-85s, say) tend to have the highest shares of lonely people of any adult age-group. Other research suggests that, among the elderly, loneliness tends to have a specific cause, such as widowhood. In the young it is generally down to a gap in expectations between relationships they have and those they want. With a winning main character, this absolutely heartwarming story unfolds with just enough surprises and heft to keep readers engaged. A natural choice for fans of Helen Simonson's Major Pettigrew's Last Stand or any of the myriad recent books about cranky men finding late-in-life joy. Hubert Bird lives a lonely and isolated life, has for years, but you couldn’t tell that from the sunny updates he provides his daughter Rose in their weekly phone calls. He lives in the London borough of Bromley and she’s a professor with a wonderful career in Melbourne, Australia. He even maintains a notebook to keep up with his lies about his busy life full of friends and activities. But now with Rose’s planned visit in six weeks, Hubert has to somehow create the life he’s sold to his daughter to make certain she doesn’t feel the need to uproot her life and return home to take care of him. Rachel is 29 and lives in a small town in Wales. She is a single parent to two children aged seven and 12. She is currently unable to work because of her mental and physical health conditions. She struggles with loneliness as she spends a lot of time alone.

What? Helping lonely people? There's nothing daft about that, darling. Nothing daft at all. Count me in.” Every day at school, I get this same feeling as you, as if there are so many souls that I have never gotten the chance to know or talk to. All I see as I walk down the hallway, my music blaring in my ears, are faces. Smiling faces, frowning faces, laughing faces, faces that are covered by someone else's, all of which I have never really seen. One of my goals in life is to be able to "see" as many people's faces as possible.

Help and advice on how to cope with loneliness and improve your mental health

Loneliness is usually best explained as the result of individual factors such as disability, depression, widowhood or leaving home without your partner. Yet some commentators say larger forces, such as “neoliberalism”, are at work. Where do they all come from? Now Hubert faces a seemingly impossible task: to make his real life resemble his fake life before the truth comes out. Risk factors for loneliness include being widowed, being single, living alone, being unemployed and having a long-term health condition I'm just sure Mike Gayle wrote this story especially for me! It's perfect! It's wonderful! It has all the feels and it gets all the stars! I highly recommend this book!

Ben Onwukwe did an amazing job with this book. After listening to this book, I couldn’t imagine experiencing this book in any other way. I really felt like he brought Hubert to life. I loved the accents and the different voices that he used in narrating this story. I thought that he had a very pleasant voice and was able to bring out the emotion in the story. In January 1958, a young Jamaican by the name of Hubert Bird sails to Southampton in search of a bright future like many others of the Windrush Generation. He finds employment and has to endure blatant racism and discrimination both in the workplace and in society in general, but remains hopeful. Hubert meets his future wife Joyce, falls in love and marries her - an inter-racial marriage that is not accepted by Joyce’s family. A hardworking and honest man, loving husband and devoted father to two children, Hubert settles down in Bromley with his wife and family. When I saw the comparison to A Man Called Ove I knew immediately I was going to love this book. And although my shelves are bursting with books that continue to wait for me to read them, I decided All The Lonely People was going to be next. I mean, the cover alone is just so lovely. Hubert's cat Puss looks just like my Archie! :) Hubert Bird. I adore you.Eleanor Rigby lives in a pretend world that she made for herself because she is so lonely and unknown--she goes into a church building after a stranger's wedding is over and grabs the rice to throw, pretending she's getting married. When she goes home, she sits by the window and smiles out, either hoping to grab someone's attention or pretending she has ("Who is it for?").