The inconsistencies notwithstanding, Ashton’s central premise that we can all be creative doesn’t, on the face of it, appear revelatory – or at least it wouldn’t if it were supported by a tight definition of what constitutes “creating”. Is it enough, as he suggests in one chapter, to open a neighbourhood bakery serving butterscotch brownies? I would wager that we all have something analogous to this in us (if, of course, as he doesn’t acknowledge, we have access to the £50,000 or so of capital required to do this), but I don’t think the overwhelming majority of us have a General Theory of Relativity or a Ninth Symphony in us, irrespective of whether we spend 10,000 or even 100,000 hours working on it. And I’m confident of this not because I imagine Beethoven spent his days feet up, playing whatever passed for the contemporary equivalent of Angry Birds, disturbed only by occasional flashes of inspiration, but because of the innumerable others that have stuck it out, all passionate intensity and endless re-workings, never making anything that approaches Ludwig’s marginalia.