What is the secret of happiness? Who better to answer that question than Theodore Zeldin, Oxford University professor, thinktank member, and author of the book 'Happiness'

Our current vocabulary is something that Theodore Zeldin seems to take issue with. He isn't happy about words like 'happiness', 'love' or 'God' being bandied about willy-nilly. One feels as though one is committing the sin of sloppy thinking when asking him about these concepts.

"I think the notion of happiness is one which tries to avoid being more precise about what it is you're seeking," he says, in a measured, precise tone. "Happiness is an out of date ideal. I think you cannot be happy if other people are unhappy. I think being useful to others is a more difficult but better ideal." Most in today's individualistic society would find this altruistic philosophy rather hard to adhere to but Zeldin's model is not necessarily one of the commune or group either. "My unit is not the individual but the couple, which can be any two people who are different and who can mix their differences in ways which are mutually stimulating."

Zeldin wants to make the world a better place. Cynics may well have started to ascribe such an aim to naive children or beauty pageant contestants but Zeldin has considerably better means at his disposal to begin to make a stab at it. The Independent on Sunday once described him as 'one of the 40 world figures whose ideas are likely to have a lasting relevance to the new millennium' and the French Magazine Litteraire called him 'one of the hundred most important thinkers in the world'. When Zeldin speaks, the world listens.

Most recently those who have been listening most carefully to him have been highflyers in the business world. Zeldin has a campaign to create "conversation companies" - companies where people talk to each other and have conversations. He believes ardently that conversations take place between equals and so when you have a proper conversation, you begin to relate to the other person on a human level rather than worrying about social status. How does he plan to bring such egalitarian ideals into the hard-nosed corporate world where doffing one's cap often appears to be the order of the day? For a start he would abolish meetings. Then he would replace them with conversations.

Conversations
Like most things with Zeldin, a loose, commonly accepted definition of what a conversation is, is not satisfactory. He is again being very precise when he speaks of conversations. A conversation is about listening to what a person is telling you, revealing who you are, finding out who they are, and endeavouring to see if you can help each other in some way. God (in the loose, commonly accepted definition) forbid that this be mistaken for 'networking'. No, he has much, much higher and worthy goals. He believes that war with Iraq would have been impossible had every family in Britain known a family in Iraq . As such he would like to make 'portraits' of people, cities, nations, the world. That we may know and understand each other.

He has even founded a project to do this. The Oxford Muse exists to facilitate conversations through finding out about people. Which people? All people. It takes some time to have the scope of such a project sink in. Yet perhaps, given his bibliography, one should not be surprised.

Despite his dislike for catch-all words like 'love', he has written some books that could never completely live up to the breathtakingly epic simplicity of their titles. 'The French' took 20 years to research and write and Zeldin would perhaps be the first to admit how much of a drop in the ocean such a book would be. He has no time for racial stereotypes and prefers conversations.

Yet all this desire to connect should not fool one into assuming he is advocating 'light and love' in a Utopian way. In his gentle way, he is scathing about people that seek to 'love everyone'. "It is often the case that people who love everybody don't actually love anybody in particular. I think I prefer to work empirically from bottom upwards. People who say they love everybody have a desire for generosity but generosity needs to be mixed with understanding and therefore it requires closer contact."

True to his theories, he makes contact with people from all strata of life and records their stories. "I've got one of these stories for example from a homeless man, which is about 30 pages long and I come out of it feeling more respect for him than I do for some of the learned professors of Oxford. He has taught himself, he's never been to a school properly. He's a wise man. He's giving himself to helping other people. Very impressive."

Apart from the homeless, Zeldin has interviewed workers, religious leaders, students, professors, industry magnates and cleaners - there isn't a nation, a race, a profession, a person he isn't interested in. It took 20 minutes to begin his interview as he quizzed me relentlessly about my job, my experiences, astrology and how I defined 'mind, body, spirit'. I'll save my blushes and not give the definition here. The point is: he is genuinely interested. It is disarming when he says it is an "emotional experience" to discover that he is often the first person in the world to have ever asked a person the sorts of questions he does. Given that he has naturally met people who are probably the antithesis to his world view, I wondered if anything ever outraged him. "Dishonesty", comes the simple reply.

Truth is an ideal that we are often used to hearing people profess to hold dear yet few go out there looking for it in all its ugly glory. Perhaps his ability to accept humanity in all its myriad forms comes from his own background. Born in Russia , Zeldin says he has a great affinity with refugees. Certainly his desire for tolerance and a lack of dogma appears to be heading toward a situation where we have the first true 'world' citizen rather than that of nation states or other divisive factors.

A word he often uses is 'outdated', generally when referring to other words that he feels are trying to encompass too much complexity into simple terms. He seems genuinely concerned with pushing forward dialogue and is utterly convinced that this is the way forward not just toward 'happiness' but toward a better world. While you may disagree with his methods as being too idealistic, you cannot help but support his vision for a world where we all converse instead of conflict.

Obstacles to happiness
If Theodore Zeldin were comfortable with the catch-all definition of the word 'happiness', then he might very well say that the secret to happiness is not something transitory like a great meal or some exciting diversion which fades away after the event but a lasting satisfaction from helping others that accumulates over time.

"A great deal of activity in which people direct themselves towards seeking what they call happiness is avoiding boredom and loneliness. Those two evils are the result of misconceptions and lack of clear thought. There's no need to be bored, the world is full of interest. There's no need to be lonely, the world is full of people who one can contact.

"We've created unneccesary obstacles in our way. In the search for a high, going on drugs and so on, you get momentary excitement. You can get more lasting and more agreeable sensations by clear thinking and understanding. It seems undeniable to me that you get more satisfaction from helping someone else than from taking drugs."

According to Zeldin, when we are unhappy, we are the victims of a lack of lucid thought. We are forgetting that we have others we can connect with.

"We none of us are ever alone. There is a great mistake which people make that they think there's no-one like them and they are miserable and everybody else is alright. We may seem alone but we can be talking with ourselves, with people who have influenced us, or books we have read, or authors, or gurus, or anything else that has impinged upon us. we are always having conversations so we should not think of ourselves as alone. And we are not alone."

When asked what he believes his legacy is, having such a wide number of achievements under his belt, he says modestly that, if anything, he would like to be thought of as a "manufacturer of courage". He manufactures courage by drawing out people who would otherwise remain voiceless, unheard and unasked to the conversation the world has with itself. It is a mammoth task but as Zeldin says: "those are the only ones worth doing".

Theodore Zeldin's books 'Conversation', 'Happiness', 'An Intimate History of Humanity' and 'The French' are available from all good bookshops.