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From a balcony perch at Christ Church in Bath on Monday evening, I listened intently to former children’s laureate Michael Rosen as he spoke of his approach to “getting better” – not just recovering from his critical bout of Covid, which saw him in an induced coma for 40 days; but also working through the grief of losing his son to meningitis in 1999; discovering in his 30s that he was suffering from hypothyroidism; and coming to terms with the complexities of a family heritage that had been silently tied-up in the holocaust.

Rosen was speaking at the event, organised to mark the publication of Rosen’s new book “Getting Better”, the 76-year-old explained he has been left feeling “fragile” and “precarious” after his experiences of the pandemic. He added that writing about the experiences have helped him to come to terms with the traumas he has been through.

“For the storyteller, a story is a way of laying things down in an order,” he said. “It is one way, if something has happened to you, to tell that story. The advantage of doing that, is that it seems to, somehow or other, put you at peace with the things that happened. One of the reasons why it is troubling is because you can’t get a handle on it. If you lay it out, you can find out there’s a piece missing and spot it. You can then put it back in.

“For the listener, something different is happening,” he added. “Because most people who listen to a story, make comparisons in their head. If somebody is telling a story about a row in their family, you think about a row in your family. So what you’re doing, is selecting bits from stories and finding analogies. Actually, you’re beginning to theorise. You’re beginning to come up with a theory as to why these things happen. We do this about the most tragic, awful things that happen to us and the darkest things. It’s absolutely crucial for our existence.

“Whether it’s the Odyssey, Dickens or Shakespeare, or opera or ballet, these are all doing the same job as what we’re doing when we gossip. It’s all part of the same jumping between worlds. I think of it as one crucial continuum that helps us understand and helps us cope.”

It is a tender book of reflection, full of wisdom and a keen sense of the relationship between language and wellbeing. The special edition for independent bookshops also comes with an engaging essay on “Reading and Recovery”. He writes: “Your mind deserves a break. It needs distracting, refreshing and helping. Reading can do all of these things.”