Shrinking Violets by Joe Moran – review

A cultural historian looks at fascinating stories of the socially awkward, from Cicero to MorrisseyShyness: a word to be whispered, these days. If the Victorians saw it as an unwavering disposition, a force all but impossible to beat, our own age tends to regard it – rather more dubiously, in my opinion – as a condition to be cured, whether with the platitudes of self help, or with drugs such as Prozac and Zoloft (for this, alas, we may trace some of the blame back to the stricter Fr