Philosophy: Egypt, Greece, Rome & Western

In Ancient Greece, when the philosopher Socrates was asked to sum up what all philosophical commandments could be reduced to, he replied: Know yourself. Self-knowledge matters so much because it is only on the basis of an accurate sense of who we are that we can make reliable decisions particularly around love and work.

A splendid new translation of one of the greatest books on friendship ever written

A dictionary is a guide to a language. This dictionary is for the distinctive language that The School of Life speaks: that of emotions. It is an alphabetical selection of some 200 words and phrases that shed light on our feelings about ourselves, other people, and the workings of the modern world.

So often, we exhaust ourselves and the planet in a search for very large pleasures - while all around us lies a wealth of small pleasures, which - if only we paid more attention - could daily bring us solace and joy at little cost and effort. But we need some encouragement to focus our gaze.

'This moving account of the life [Rowlands] lived with an adopted wolf will be recognized as a seminal work of philosophy that forces us to re-evaluate our view of the human animal' John Gray, author of Straw Dogs