The School of Life - Modern Manners

1. The School of Life Guide to Modern Manners • Hardback book | 109 pages | 199 x 139 mm

Modern life is full of minor but acute dilemmas: wishing to end a boring conversation without causing offence; forgetting a name when introducing friends; running into an ex on a first date with a new partner…

This book puts good manners back at the centre of our lives. Through twenty case studies, Modern Manners provides a new philosophy of graceful conduct. Far from trivial diversions, manners are the practical expression of a dignified mission to create a kinder and more considerate world.

Topics Include:

• How to Be Comfortable On Your Own In Public
• How to Make People Feel Good About Themselves
• How to Become Someone People Will Confide In
• How to Deal With The Subtext
• How to Stop Worrying Whether or Not They Like You

2. Thinking & Eating • Hardback book | 367 pages | 223 x 172mm

Recipes to Nourish & Inspire

We know well enough that the right sort of foods can help us to be healthy. But, with equal importance, the right foods are also capable of altering our moods: they can be crucial sources of inspiration, playfulness, generosity and optimism.

This is a unique kind of recipe book about what we should eat in order to feel like our best selves - an inspired marriage of psychology and cooking, and a guide to just the sort of foods to put on our plates in order to grow a little calmer and more relaxed in ourselves, kinder to others and readier to face everyday challenges.

The book suggests the very best recipes drawn from around the world that we might prepare at any time of day, from stews to soups, curries to cakes. The approach turns cooking into an ideally therapeutic activity - by which we can recover faith in ourselves and hope in our lives.

Topics Include:

• Looking after ourselves
• With friends
• Relationships
• Food for thinking
• Conversations

3. What is Culture For? • Hardback book | 118 x 110 mm | 110 pp

How to find compassion, hope and perspective in the arts.

Our societies frequently proclaim their enormous esteem for culture. Music, film, literature and the visual arts enjoy high prestige and are viewed by many as getting close to the meaning of life. But what is culture really for?

This book proposes that works of culture were all made, in one way or another, with the idea of improving the way we live. This book connects a range of cultural masterpieces with our own dilemmas and pains around love, work and society, and invites us to see culture as a resource with which to address the complex agonies of being human. It provides us with enduring keys to unlocking culture as a way of transforming our lives.

'Great works of culture were all made, in one way or another, with the idea of changing lives.'

'The power of culture arguably best emerges when we rely on it as a therapeutic tool that can be used in a quest to grow somewhat less isolated, frightened, shamed, restricted or skittish.'

'By interacting with art, we encounter the spirit or voice of someone who profoundly sympathises with suffering, but who allows us to sense that through it, we’re connecting with something universal and unashamed.'