Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton was born in Zürich on 20 December 1969, read at Cambridge and King's College London, and abandoned a Harvard doctorate on French philosophy to write for a general readership instead. Philosophy applied to ordinary trouble is the whole project. Essays in Love (1993), published as On Love in the United States, narrates an unremarkable relationship from first meeting to collapse while stopping every few pages to examine it; it has sold around two million copies. The Course of Love (2016) picks the same problem up after the wedding, arguing that romanticism trains people badly for marriage. In 2008 he co-founded The School of Life in London, a business selling courses, therapy and books on emotional education, and The School of Life: An Emotional Education (2019) is its summary in one volume. He also started Living Architecture, which commissions holiday houses from architects including Peter Zumthor. Critics have long accused him of dressing up the obvious.