On Thursday evening next week I will be discussing my new book @Southwarkcathed with @DeanSouthwark. Do come!

RT @GuyStagg: In the summer of 1920, Ludwig Wittgenstein spent two months working as an assistant gardener at Klosterneuburg, a wealthy mon….

RT @PaulGoodmanCH: My @thetimes review of @GuyStagg's The World Within - "What can we learn from three great minds who retreated from the w….

'Stagg writes masterfully.' Pleased with this Times review of my new book, The World Within.

Loved speaking to @meta_nomad about my new book. Have been listening to @Hermitixpodcast for several years now, so delighted to be a guest on the show.

RT @IskanderRehman: Excellent review of a recent biography of Lawrence Durrell @EngelsbergIdeas I tend to agree that his non-fiction is be….

RT @fotofacade: Ghost window: a spectral trace in brick and flint. Every now and then I come across a scene that is utterly beautiful but n….

The Alexandria Quartet may read as dated now, but Durrell's non-fiction helped foster our modern fascination with the Mediterranean and captured a world that disappeared in the age of mass tourism.

I tell the story of Wittgenstein's retreats in my new book, The World Within. It explores why artists, writers and thinkers withdraw from society and is now on sale:

That building I visited on my final day. The monastery is now a block of flats and no trace remains of the formal gardens, nor the potting shed where the philosopher again spent his nights. Yet Wittgenstein came to rebuild himself and here he learnt to face the world once more.

The teaching career came to an abrupt end after Wittgenstein knocked a pupil unconscious in a fit of anger. Once more he sought refuge in a monastery, becoming a gardener for the Barmherzige Brüder, a hospital order with a care home on the outskirts of Vienna.

Wittgenstein spent seven years teaching in remote mountain schools. He cut off contact from his family and tried to live in simplicity. ‘It is not easy to have a saint for a brother, and I would rather have a happy person for a brother than an unhappy saint,’ his sister wrote.

The monastery contains one of Austria's largest private libraries. It also houses royal apartments, a museum and the superb Verduner Altar. But Wittgenstein did not come here to think or pray; instead, Klosterneuburg was a place where he could forget himself completely.

Wittgenstein was convinced only manual labour would lift his mood. Sure enough, gardening each day in the monastery grounds, his depression began to lift. 'When the work is done in the evening, I am tired and then do not feel unhappy.'

The third was his failure to find a publisher for the 'Tractatus', though Wittgenstein was convinced the book had solved the major problems of philosophy. 'The best for me, perhaps, would be if I could lie down one evening and not wake up again,’ he wrote to a friend.

Three things brought Wittgenstein to Klosterneuburg. The first was a religious conversion that took place during the war, inspired by Tolstoy's 'Gospel in Brief'. The second was the death of David Pinsent, his first love and closest friend, who was killed in a flying accident.

I visited the monastery several summers ago. It's occupied by the Augustinian Canons - priests who live in community but take no vow of poverty. And I was struck by the splendour of the place: the gilded interiors, the grand common rooms, the endless echoing corridors.

Klosterneuburg was founded in 1114 by the patron saint of Austria. In the seventeenth century it was rebuilt to rival the Escorial, although the extravagant plans were never completed. But Wittgenstein spent his days in the nurseries and slept each night in a potting shed.

Wittgenstein was 31 years old. The previous summer, he had returned to Austria from a POW camp in Italy, where he had been held since the end of the war. On arriving in Vienna, he gave away his immense inherited fortune and began to train as a teacher.

In the summer of 1920, Ludwig Wittgenstein spent two months working as an assistant gardener at Klosterneuburg, a wealthy monastery to the north of Vienna. At the start of summer he was suicidally depressed, but these months proved a turning point in Wittgenstein's life.