'David is a true philosopher, great journalist and excellent writer. He has gone where others only imagine trading, and the book is packed with gags, wisdom and pathos. It actually IS a must-read.' 

Tom Hodgkinson, The Idler

SYNOPSIS

After his partner left him for someone, ‘younger but more mature’, David set himself a life-changing task: to be a more sharing, loving person. As a man with a taste for the exotic however, this was never going to be resolved by a weekend course in Mindfulness. Instead he embarked on a global adventure to learn how to live with others. He visited an anarchist community in Denmark, a futuristic city in the desert and found paradise in a Californian retreat, dreamt up by Aldous Huxley. Most fantastic if all was Damanhur in the Italian Alps, with an underground temple the size of St Paul’s Cathedral, and a ‘fully functioning time machine’.

Along the way, David’s quest raise issues that best many of us. Why is depression rife amongst those who have wealth and freedom? Is getting what you want really utopia? And could alternative communities teach us a better way to live in both our relationships and our modern cities?

This wry, self-deprecatingly funny and philosophical book asks some big questions and finds the answers surprisingly simple.

The No9 Bus to Utopia at the Bosco Tent Brighton Festival 2015 

PRAISE FOR THE NO9 BUS TO UTOPIA 

'I loved this book - warm, funny and enlightening.'

Suzy Greaves (Editor, Psychologies) 

'I love this book, its cutting observation tempered by an affection and openness to his fellow travellers is as compassionate as it is funny. David Bramwell has written a very important book pretending to be otherwise.'

Tim Smit (Dir. Eden Project)

'I was so gripped, I read the whole thing in less than two days.'

Abigail Ann (Good Reads)

'Amusing and illuminating. Bramwell moves through the various attempts at utopia like a spiritually questing Arthur Dent – a seeker, as his late friend Ken Campbell said, but one with a sense of humour.'

Marcus O'Dair (Guardian Book of the Year author, Robert Wyatt: Different Every Time)

‘One of the best non-fiction books I read in 2014 (and I read a lot) – David Bramwell’s worldwide search for the perfect community is honest, charming, revelatory and often hilarious. A real eye-opener.’

Stevyn Colgan (QI elf)

'The anti-Heart of Darkness; from the excruciating and the scrotum-tightening to the life-affirming and downright joyous. '

Dunstan Bruce (Chumbawamba)

'Number 9 Bus to Utopia is a warm, funny, and oddly moving book. Dr Bramwell's personal odyssey of bewildered self-discovery brilliantly captures the eternal lure or stepping off the established path and wandering through the forest - when you don't know where you are going, you are never bored. Highly recommended.'

John Higgs (author of KLF, Alternative History of the 20th Century)