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Day 60: Jean-Paul Sartre. "Three hours in the morning, three hours in the evening. This is my only rule." That makes the Sartre's life sound relaxed, but misleadingly. His diet over a period of 24 hours included 2 packs of cigarettes and several stuffed with black tobacco, more than a quart of alcohol, 200 milligrams of amphetamines, 15 grams of aspirin, several grams of barbiturates, plus coffee, tea and rich meals.

Day 59: Pablo Picasso. Who hasn't heard of Picasso? But who has heard of the fact that, in the company of people, he would oscillate between gregarious and anti-social? However, painting never bored or tired him. Even after three or four hours standing in front of a canvas, he did not feel the slightest fatigue. “That’s why painters live so long,” he said. “While I work I leave my body outside the door."

Day 58: Erik Satie. The scholar Roger Shattuck once proposed that Satie’s unique sense of musical beat, and his appreciation of “the possibility of variation within repetition,” could be traced to this “endless walking back and forth across the same landscape day after day.” He did so wearing the same colour and style of velvet suits with matching hats, every day. Regularity and rhythm do seem to have a link.

Day 57: Igor Stravinsky. An eccentric composer. He required solitude for the task, and always closed the windows of his studio before he began: “I have never been able to compose unless sure that no one could hear me.” If he felt blocked, the composer might execute a brief headstand, which, he said, “rests the head and clears the brain.”

Day 56: Samuel Beckett. His best works were conceived in a period of intense creative activity that Beckett would later refer to as "the siege in the room", which began with an epiphany at the end of the pier one winter. "It was spent largely in his room, isolated from the world, coming face to face with his own demons, attempting to explore the workings of his mind."

Day 55: Marcel Proust. Yet another author whose works I haven't yet had the gall to pick up. "It almost seems as though a writer’s works, like the water in an artesian well, mount to a height which is in proportion to the depth to which suffering has penetrated his heart."

Day 54: James Joyce. An author whose works I haven't yet had the courage to pick up. "A man of small virtue, inclined to extravagance and alcoholism" is how the Irish novelist once described himself.