Alain de Botton

Alain de Botton (born 20 December 1969) is a Swiss-born British author and public speaker.

His books discuss various contemporary subjects and themes, emphasizing philosophy's relevance to everyday life.

He then completed an MPhil in Philosophy at King's College, London (1991–1992), and began studying for a PhD in French philosophy at Harvard University.

However, he gave up his research to write books for the general public.

He published Essays in Love (1993), which went on to sell two million copies.

In his first novel, Essays in Love (titled On Love in the U.S.), published in 1993, de Botton deals with the process of falling in and out of love.

Other bestsellers include How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997), Status Anxiety (2004), and The Architecture of Happiness (2006).

In 1997 he published his first non-fiction book, How Proust Can Change Your Life, based on the life and works of Marcel Proust.

It was a bestseller in both the US and UK.

Gilbert was born in Alexandria, Egypt, but after being expelled under Nasser, he went to live and work in Switzerland, where he co-founded an investment firm, Global Asset Management; his family was estimated to have been worth £234 million in 1999.

Alain de Botton's Swiss-born mother was Ashkenazi, and his father was from a Sephardic Jewish family from the town of Boton in Castile and León.

De Botton's ancestors include Abraham de Boton.

De Botton's paternal grandmother was Yolande Harmer, a Jewish-Egyptian journalist who spied for Israel and died in Jerusalem.

He has one sister, Miel, and they received a secular upbringing.

Alain spent the first twelve years of his life in Switzerland where he was brought up speaking French and German.

De Botton attended the Dragon School where English became his primary language.

He was later sent to board and study at Harrow School, a public school in England.

He has often described his childhood as that of a shy child living in boarding schools.

De Botton read history at University of Cambridge, where he was a member of Gonville and Caius College, graduating with a double starred first.

This was followed by The Consolations of Philosophy in 2000.

The title of the book is a reference to Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, in which philosophy appears as an allegorical figure to Boethius to console him in the period leading up to his impending execution.

In The Consolations of Philosophy, de Botton attempts to demonstrate how the teachings of philosophers such as Epicurus, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Seneca, and Socrates can be applied to modern everyday woes.

The book has been both praised and criticized for its therapeutic approach to philosophy.

In 2004, he published Status Anxiety.

In The Architecture of Happiness (2006), he discusses the nature of beauty in architecture and how it is related to the well-being and general contentment of the individual and society.

He describes how architecture affects people every day, though people rarely pay particular attention to it.

A good portion of the book discusses how human personality traits are reflected in architecture.

He defends Modernist architecture, and chastises the pseudo-vernacular architecture of housing, especially in the UK.

"The best modern architecture," he argues, "doesn't hold a mirror up to nature, though it may borrow a pleasing shape or expressive line from nature's copybook. It gives voice to aspirations and suggests possibilities. The question isn't whether you'd actually like to live in a Le Corbusier home, but whether you'd like to be the kind of person who'd like to live in one."

He co-founded The School of Life in 2008 and Living Architecture in 2009.

In The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), de Botton produced a survey of ten different jobs, including accountancy, rocket science and biscuit manufacture.

The book, a piece of narrative non-fiction, includes two hundred original images and aims to unlock the beauty, interest and occasional horror of the modern world of work.

After a negative review of the book by New York Times critic Caleb Crain, de Botton posted a scathing ad hominem attack against Crain.

He later apologized for his remarks.

In August 2009, de Botton applied to a competition advertised among British literary agents by the airport management company BAA for the post of "writer-in-residence" at Heathrow Airport.

The post involved being seated at a desk in Terminal 5, and writing about the comings and goings of passengers over a week.

In 2010, Essays in Love was adapted to film by director Julian Kemp for the romantic comedy My Last Five Girlfriends.

In 2015, he was awarded "The Fellowship of Schopenhauer", an annual writers' award from the Melbourne Writers Festival, for that work.

De Botton was born in Zürich, the son of Jacqueline (née Burgauer) and Gilbert de Botton.

De Botton wrote a sequel to Essays in Love, published in 2016, titled The Course of Love.