BACKGROUND: Alain de Botton spent the first eight years of his life in Zurich, Switzerland, before embarking upon schooling at Harrow. He moved to London at the age of 12, where he still resides today. Aside from boasting a double-starred first in history and philosophy at Cambridge, de Botton also has a Masters’ degree in philosophy from Kings College, London.

As a writer and broadcaster, de Botton has carved his niche by linking the philosophy of celebrated thinkers and artists to his own daily experience. A member of the Arts Council of England’s literature panel, he has published eight internationally acclaimed books and owns a production company called Seneca Productions, which aims to offer programmes that are “at once great fun and profound and ambitious in their subject matter”.

LOVE: De Botton’s range is varied; he has written on subjects as disparate as travel, architecture and status. However, at the core of his writing lies a voracious desire to learn from experience, from the world around us, and then use that experience as a springboard towards a better future.

His first book, Essays in Love, interweaved fiction with non-fiction as de Botton sought to explore the rawness of emotion produced when one finds oneself in love.

Profoundly personal yet universal at the same time, Essays in Love revealed de Botton as an original author who was prepared to shine a light on the things that the majority take for granted, thus providing a myriad of insights into the desires and the motivations of each and every one of us.

This successful first book was followed with The Romantic Movement: Sex, Shopping and the Novel and Kiss and Tell, but it was How Proust Can Change Your Life that cemented a reputation for literary excellence.

As an unlikely self-help tome, How Proust Can Change Your Life sought to utilise one of the 20th century’s greatest writers as a bedrock for profound glimpses into the human condition.

Underlying de Botton’s populist appeal was the fact that the book was later made into a documentary starring Ralph Fiennes and Felicity Kendall.

PHILOSOPHY: Practicality is perhaps de Botton’s greatest legacy. It is by understanding the minutae of everyday life, even within the sometimes-convoluted work of great writers and thinkers, that de Botton demonstrates his relevancy. Nowhere is this more the case than in The Consolations of Philosophy.

It was this book that cemented de Botton’s place as one of world’s foremost progressive thinkers. By exploring the theories of six well-known philosophers – Epicurus, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Seneca and Socrates – the author seeks to bed their work in a contemporary context, attempting to make centuries-old and common problems, such as unpopularity and lovelessness, and their subsequent solutions as pertinent as they were the day they were conceived.

As de Botton himself says: “It’s clear to me that there is no good reason for many philosophy books to sound as complicated as they do.” This was a trend he sought to address directly in The Consolations of Philosophy. The trilogy comprising The Art of Travel, Status Anxiety and The Architecture of Happiness study personal desires. Themes of foreboding, social pressure (whether real or imagined) the absurdity of culture and the road to enlightenment and happiness are central to each of these works and, typically, questions raised by de Botton are then systematically answered, with a distinct lack of pretension and always with his trademark dry wit and wisdom.

As lucid as the many pictures he uses in his books to clarify his ideas, de Botton’s work thrives on breaking up complex suppositions into amenable portions that belie the magnitude of the initial undertaking.

SUMMARY: Originality added to a sometimes-incongruous logic helps shape de Botton’s prose in that the banality of life – discussions of Nesquick, among other things, can be found in his books – is every bit as crucial as the lustre.

If there’s one thing to take from de Botton’s body of work, it is this: the accessibility of truth-seeking ideas, re-imagined from their former grandiose form, can lead to fulfilment on a monumental level, achievable by all.

This month’s column was written by Adam Bushby, who is in learning and development publishing. If you’d like to write about someone who has inspired you, contact Sue Mennell at sue@trainingjournal.com

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