Enjoy a spot of tea with Alain de Botton:

I think envy is unavoidable. I think it's an absolutely essential emotion, and so rarely discussed. It's a basic emotion. All of us are unavoidably inadequate, because there's so much that we can't do and that we don't know.

It seems very important as an adult to have a good relationship to your own envy.

About the book, on sale next month in the US:

I wrote The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work to shine a spotlight on the working world. I wanted to write a book that would open our eyes to the beauty and occasional horror of the working world—and I did this by looking at 10 different industries, a deliberately eclectic range from accountancy to engineering, from biscuit manufacture to logistics.

The strangest thing about the world of work is the widespread expectation that our work should make us happy.

We are the heirs of two very ambitious beliefs: that you can be in love and married, and in a job and having a good time. It has become as impossible for us to think that you could be out of work and happy as it had once seemed impossible for Aristotle to think that you could be employed and human. Thus is born The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.