And yet, the book is enormously engaging, even lovable, at times. There is a brilliant scene towards the end when de Botton is in Mojave and finds a sort of elephants' graveyard of decaying airplanes. He asks the security man at the gate if he can walk around and the man tells him t...
plan, volume and design, but much more about the emotions that architecture inspires in the user of buildings. Many people, my wife included, devote huge amounts of time trying to ensure that the interior of their houses is a bulwark against the disorder...
When, in AD 65, Seneca was ordered to kill himself by the crazed Emperor Nero, his wife and family collapsed in tears, but Seneca had learnt to follow the charriot of life with resignation. As he calmly took the knife to his veins, he remarked – in a sentence we may be wise to ...