“Our search for silence is really the search for the space to think rather than a desire for the silence itself,” David Hendy concludes in this compelling social history of noise and sound. The listening element of human interaction is something that we can overlook in our efforts to create “silence” or “space” in our lives – the things with which we try to combat the hurly-burly of modern life. But sound can serve the basic human need to feel a part of the world around us. Hendy traces human sound from prehistoric man, who created sound patterns in tandem with his cave drawings, through to medieval Europe, when cathedral builders created shared spaces for sound. He recounts how Julius Caesar ordered sound-reduction measures in bustling ancient Rome and how Dr Dan McKenzie feared that noise was destroying the mental health of London residents in the early 20th century. Hendry shows that while the phenomenon of human sound appears to be simple it is anything but.
