The Times

EMMA TOWNSHEND for The Times, September 15, 2008. Read the article on their website here.

I'm lying on the floor of the School of Life in Bloomsbury, drawing with felt-tip pens for the first time since primary school to create a map of my career. The slightly depressing thing is that I'm doing it alongside Alain de Botton. His career map is unstoppably straight and neat. Mine looks more like a mess, lots of squiggles. To make things worse, around us is a brilliant felt-tip trompe-l'oeil wall mural that transforms our windowless basement classroom into a fantasy study replete with books on Tina Barney and a view of the Med, but I decide that's more inspiring than dispiriting.

The School of Life is the baby of Sophie Howarth, formerly of Tate Modern, who found herself after five years in the job frustrated by the lack of dialogue between culture and selfimprovement, two areas that she felt equally passionate about: “The cultural world was just so snooty about everything to do with personal development, but I felt there was so much potential for the two to interact.”

So she decided that it was time for a change. She found the School of Life building, a beautiful Georgian shop in tree-lined Marchmont Street in Bloomsbury, then enlisted all her best contacts, including de Botton, who is a founder member of the teaching staff. Howarth's vision was of a place where you could go to think seriously about life, a private but open-doored university where you could take courses, read books and even travel in new ways. The results are now clear: you can go to Heathrow for the weekend with de Botton, hear a terrifying sermon on punctuality by the author Geoff Dyer, or tour the Isle of Wight, pondering the English holiday snap, in the company of Martin Parr. There is also “bibliotherapy”, a bespoke book recommendation service and a dining club.

“It's exciting to be part of a completely new idea,” Parr says. He intends his Isle of Wight weekend break to be a proper educational experience. “I want to pass on my enthusiasm for photography, but also my rigour. Many people are stuck in their ways, so it's a chance to throw ideas at them, and to do it by example.”

Asked what he is keenest to teach, Parr is quick to answer: “Getting up early! And sticking at it. With photography, most people don't know what they're saying, or what they're trying to say. The great thing about the Isle of Wight is that it's spectacularly interesting, photogenic and quirky, so it should produce some great results.”

De Botton's trip to Heathrow airport, on the other hand, is a more cerebral affair - as you'd expect from the philosopher. “I love airports, and I love an idea of a holiday to the very ordinary - the weird poetry of empty airports. So we'll be staying Saturday night in the Yotel, a capsule hotel inside the airport, to make people leave their familiar circumstances.” On offer while on holiday in Heathrow will be a range of activities, de Botton explains, with a number of intriguing speakers: “Important people with serious things to say about terminal design, but also left-field people such as plane spotters and someone who collects BOAC merchandise, even a chef who'll do us some airline catering,” he laughs.

I ask him how he found the session that we both attended at the School of Life itself, with the coloured pens and the drawing on the floor. “It was unexpectedly raw and moving,” he says.

The career maps that both he and I drew were part of a three-hour session designed to use philosophy and culture to rethink our attitudes to careers and achievement. During the autumn term the school will hold a series of evening courses focusing on the big topics: love, work, family and play.

We are carefully shepherded through a series of group exercises by Roman, our slightly hippyish, warm and gentle teacher. And, when pressed, even de Botton confesses that he has experienced career doubts: “I have to admit, I have a secret bakery fantasy.”

I find the exercises profoundly interesting. While doing the career map, we all looked slightly stunned when told to stop. “That was one of the most useful things I've done,” said one participant, Kelly, who'd never noticed that she had a tendency to visualise everything in terms of career pressure. Another group member, already a successful author, talked about how he'd realised that there was a pattern to do with emotional responses to decision-making that he'd never seen before.

So when I get de Botton on the phone later, I have to ask about the bakery. “Ah,” he laughs. “One of the things when you work with words or ideas, you always think, is anyone eating this and having fun? The great thing about the bakery is that it doesn't leave you in any doubt. People are coming and buying what you make and taking it away to eat. It's all about hunger.

“When I met Sophie, she told me that she had this idea. It seemed totally relevant to ordinary life. But I also liked the idea that it was serious; it wasn't mystical, it was academic in a way. But that it was going to have a shop, an actual building, I really enjoyed. So I suppose,” he smiles, “it's a bit of a bakery.”