from BBC Learning English.

I'm Neil.  

And I'm Rob. It's great that you're

here to keep me company -

to spend time with me so

I don't get lonely -

because loneliness is the

subject of this programme. It's good to be here, Neil.

I think many of us have

experienced loneliness at

some point. Maybe you've

felt lonely because all your

friends have gone out for

dinner without you, or

maybe you've felt lonely

just because you don't

fit in somewhere. Yes, that's when we sometimes

use the expression 'to feel

lonely in a crowd'. Well,

we'll be exploring if this

is a new idea or something

humans have always

experienced, and along

the way we'll be teaching

you some new vocabulary. But now I'm here to keep you

company, how about a

question for me?

Of course! Well, one

possibly lonely man is

Mauro Morandi. He's lived

alone on Budelli Island in

Italy for many years, but

how many years exactly?

Is it: a) 6 years,

b) 31 years, or

c) 44 years? Umm ... 44 years would be

tough, as would 31, so

I'll go for 6 years. OK, Rob, we'll find out

later if that's right.

Now, I'm sure we all

want to be alone from

time to time, to escape

the demands of our

colleagues or the

pressures of real life,

but would we really want

to be totally alone? Well, I certainly wouldn't.

And research has found that

prolonged social isolation

is bad for us,

particularly mentally. It's an interesting topic,

and one that the BBC Radio

4 programme Thinking Aloud

has been exploring.

Its guest, Fay Bound Alberti,

Reader in History at the

University of York,

explained how loneliness is

a relatively new

emotional state. A state is a condition at

a particular time. Let's

hear what she had to say

about references to

loneliness in literature. Well, novels are

fascinating, because there's

a difference between novels

in the 18th Century, when

they first came into being,

and novels in the 19th

Century - in the 18th

Century something like

Robinson Crusoe, there's

not a single reference

to loneliness. By the 19th

Century novels are

full of lonely people

and that reflects those

kinds of social changes. Give me some examples.

What may count

as examples? Well, I suppose I'm

thinking about if you

compare something like

Wuthering Heights where

you have this desperate

desire on the part of

the heroine to find love

which is bundled up

to in this sense of the

self not being complete

without another, or

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

And so Victorian

fiction in particular

tends to be full of woman

who are in search of the

significant other and

needing to find happiness

and an absence of loneliness

in the domestic. It's interesting that Fay

mentions the story of

Robinson Crusoe - about

a man living on a desert

island - does not mention

the word loneliness.

But because of a shift

in how people behaved

and thought in the

19th century - called

social change - loneliness

became an emotion that

was written about

in stories. Ah, but loneliness tended

to be something affecting

women. They were

searching for happiness

by finding a 'significant

other' - a partner, usually

a man, who they wanted to

marry. How things

have changed! Yes, now Fay also went

on to talk about how

some female authors,

like Virginia Woolf,

looked for solitude - that's

being alone - because

that helped them

be creative. Even today, being alone

gives us headspace and

time to think, as long

as it doesn't last

forever. Anyway, as we

mentioned, we've probably

all been lonely at some

point, and Fay Bound Alberti

told the Thinking Aloud

programme that loneliness

can take many forms. Absolutely, I think that

loneliness is something

that affects all people

but at different times

in their lives. I would

describe in terms of

pinch points - there are

times when we change

[when we become] when we

get married, we become

mothers, we get divorced,

anything that changes

our life might put us

under temporary loneliness.

When it's a problem is

when it becomes chronic. It seems that there are

certain times in our

lives when we might feel

lonely - when we break

up with a partner or

have a baby and feel

isolated, for example.

These are moments that

Fay describes as pinch

points - times in your

life where there are

difficulties and things

slow down or change. We could say loneliness

at these times is

understandable, normal

and temporary. When it

becomes a bigger issue,

it's what Fay describes

as chronic - so,

long lasting. And loneliness isn't

always obvious to other

people, so it's good to

check in with friends

and family to see how

they're feeling and to

ask if they re OK.

Of course, it would be

difficult to check in

on Mauro Morandi, who's

been living on Budelli

Island in Italy for