About The School of Life

The School of Life is a new cultural enterprise based in central London offering intelligent instruction on how to lead a fulfilled life.

We offer evening and weekend courses, holidays to unexpected locations, stigma-free psychotherapy, secular sermons, conversation meals, a floating faculty of experts and a new kind of literary consultancy service called bibliotherapy.

Our faculty is made up of some of the brightest thinkers and artists at work today. They include Alain de Botton, Geoff Dyer, Susan Elderkin, Tom Hodgkinson, Brett Kahr, Robert Macfarlane and Martin Parr.

We are based in a small but spectacular shop on Marchmont Street, a thriving and bohemian part of central London. We've organised the shop as a chemist for the mind, a place where you can try out a variety of cultural solutions to everyday ailments. We sell books, artworks, courses, holidays and therapeutic services.

At the back of the shop a door leads through to an extraordinary underground classroom created by artist Charlotte Mann. This is where we host regular evening and weekend courses exploring the five central themes of our lives - work, play, family, politics and love. The experiences of our remarkable faculty are combined with insights from important thinkers of the past to offer a unique combination of wit and wisdom around questions of everyday living. 

The School of Life is open to everyone seeking intellectual and personal adventure.  Our audiences, like our faculty, are characterised by curiosity, sociability, open mindedness and an appetite for life.