Books Written by Alain de Botton

Seventeen under his name, counting one co-written with John Armstrong. The 13 key books on this page run from Essays in Love (1993) to The Course of Love (2016); the other four are How to Think More About Sex (2012), Art as Therapy (2013), The School of Life: An Emotional Education (2020) and A Therapeutic Journey (2023).

Essays in Love (1993), The Romantic Movement (1994), Kiss and Tell (1995), How Proust Can Change Your Life (1997), The Consolations of Philosophy (2000), The Art of Travel (2002), Status Anxiety (2004), The Architecture of Happiness (2006), The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009), A Week at the Airport (2009), Religion for Atheists (2012), The News: A User’s Manual (2014) and The Course of Love (2016).

The Consolations of Philosophy (2000): six philosophers, from Socrates to Nietzsche, each applied to an ordinary difficulty. If you prefer fiction, start with Essays in Love (1993).

Essays in Love (1993), his first novel, published in the US as On Love; Wikipedia gives its sales as two million copies. Of his non-fiction, How Proust Can Change Your Life and The Consolations of Philosophy are the best known.

Not in the sense of continuing the story: the couple are different, Rabih and Kirsten instead of the narrator and Chloe. It returns to the same subject 23 years later, but follows a relationship after the falling in love, through marriage and children.

Yes. Essays in Love became the film My Last Five Girlfriends (2010). The Consolations of Philosophy became the Channel 4 series Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness (2000), and Status Anxiety and The Architecture of Happiness (as The Perfect Home) were also made for television.

In June 2009 Caleb Crain reviewed The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work negatively in The New York Times. De Botton posted a comment on Crain’s blog calling the review driven by “an almost manic desire to bad-mouth” and ending “I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make.” He later apologised.

An organisation de Botton co-founded in London in 2008 with a group of writers and educators. It offers classes, books and videos on what it calls “an emotional education”, mainly about relationships and work, and has branches in other cities.

He studied philosophy (an MPhil at King’s College London and an unfinished PhD at Harvard) but writes for general readers rather than academics. Critics have called him a “pop philosopher”; his books use philosophers to think about everyday life rather than to add to academic philosophy.

Yes. He was born on 20 December 1969 in Zürich and lives in London. His most recent book on this page’s lists is A Therapeutic Journey (2023).

A couple, Rabih and Kirsten, followed from falling in love in Edinburgh through marriage, children and the years after. De Botton interrupts the story with short essays on what is going on between them. It is sometimes searched as “A Course in Love”, but the 2016 novel is called The Course of Love.

A 2023 book on mental health, subtitled Lessons from the School of Life. It follows the path from crisis to recovery: realising you can no longer cope, finding relief through self-care or therapy, and regaining stability, with attention to relationship breakdown, career setbacks and everyday anxiety.

In 2009 BAA, the operator of Heathrow, made de Botton its writer in residence for a week, at a desk in the departures hall of Terminal 5. A Week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary (2009) is the short illustrated result, with photographs by Richard Baker, about the building, the staff and the passengers.

A short 2012 book in The School of Life series. De Botton argues that almost everyone feels unusual about sex, because hardly anyone matches the norms they think they should, and that it deserves to be talked about openly and kindly rather than treated as something we already understand.

A 1997 study of Marcel Proust’s life, habits, family and writing, arranged as a mock self-help manual, with chapters on how to read, how to suffer and how to be a good friend. It was his first non-fiction book, after three novels.

In Art as Therapy (2013), written with the art historian John Armstrong, he treats art as a tool for living and gives it seven functions: remembering, hope, sorrow, rebalancing, self-understanding, growth and appreciation.

An essay de Botton wrote for The New York Times in 2016. It argues that everyone is in some way difficult to live with, so the search for a perfect match is the real mistake, and that compatibility is something love achieves rather than its starting point. It was the paper’s most-read article of 2016, and The School of Life later published it as a short book.

A British writer, born in Zürich in 1969, who uses philosophy and literature to think about everyday life: love, work, status and travel. He wrote Essays in Love and The Consolations of Philosophy, and in 2008 co-founded The School of Life in London.

He was born on 20 December 1969 in Zürich, Switzerland, so he turned 56 in December 2025.

In London. He was born in Zürich and grew up speaking French and German, then went to boarding school in England, first the Dragon School and then Harrow.

Yes. He met his wife, Charlotte, in 2002, and in a 2017 interview with Krista Tippett he said they had been married for over a dozen years and had two children.

No. He studied history and philosophy, not clinical psychology, and writes as an essayist. The School of Life, which he co-founded, does offer psychotherapy through its own therapists, and much of his later writing, such as A Therapeutic Journey, is about mental health.

He comes from a Jewish family: his father, the financier Gilbert de Botton, was born in Alexandria, Egypt, into a Sephardic family, and his Swiss-born mother was Ashkenazi. The family was secular, and he has called what he was told about being Jewish “a genuinely confusing message”.

No. He writes as a non-believer: Religion for Atheists (2012) starts from the view that religious doctrines are not true, and asks what atheists can still borrow from religion, such as community, art and ritual.

AL-on de BO-ton, with the final n of both Alain and Botton barely pronounced, according to his publisher.