Alain de Botton
Alain de Botton is an award-winning writer, broadcaster and public speaker, whose books have sold in millions around the world. Described as a “philosopher of everyday life”, he has covered subjects from art to architecture and from love to travel. Many of his books have been made into television documentaries and series and, in 2003, he was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres – one of France’s highest artistic honours.
Alain de Botton was born in Zurich, Switzerland and now lives in North London. He is the author of nine books, both fiction and non-fiction, including Essays in Love (1993), How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997), The Art of Travel (2002) and The Architecture of Happiness (2006). His latest book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, will be published in April 2009 and explores the “beauty, interest and occasional horror of the modern world of work.” At this year’s festival, Alain will be solving your work problems live on stage, drawing from his extensive travels and study undertaken for the writing of The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. “Most literary festivals feel like work,” he says. “Port Eliot is like messing about in a garden at play – and from this informality comes the particular zaniness and inventiveness that is the festival’s hallmark. It’s always a joy to come.”
Alain de Botton is also the founder of The School of Life; a new social enterprise based in central London, offering a variety of programmes and services concerned with how to live wisely and well. “This is the sort of place that can make you genuinely wise, rather than merely smart. In its spirit, it achieves everything I’ve been trying to do with my own writing for the past 15 years,” he says.
“All de Botton’s books, fiction and non-fiction, deal with how thought and specifically philosophy might help us deal better with the challenges of quotidian life – returning philosophy to its simple, sound origins.”
Annette Kobak, Times Literary Supplement
Links:
- Alain de Botton talks to Monocle magazine about urban development monstrosities:
- Interview in The Idler
- TV and audio clips
Video:
Excerpt from a film about Status Anxiety
