Tom Butler-Bowdon

Gaarder is a Norwegian surname.

Simon Blackburn (born July 1944, in England) is the son of Cuthbert Walter and Edna Blackburn. He attended Clifton College, Bristol (1957–62) and Trinity College, Cambridge, earning a B.A. in 1963. He married Angela Margaret Bowles in 1968 and has two children. His books include Think, Being Good, Plato's Republic: A Biography, How to Read Hume, and Ethics: A Very Short Introduction.

William James Durant was an American historian and philosopher, best known for his eleven-volume work, The Story of Civilization, which contains and details the history of Eastern and Western civilizations.

Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872–1970) was a British philosopher, logician, and writer, born on 18 May 1872 at Trelleck. A founding figure of analytic philosophy and logicism, he published extensively on logic, epistemology, and the theory of knowledge, with his best-known works including Principia Mathematica and A History of Western Philosophy (1945), which became a bestseller. He received the 1950 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Alain de Botton is a Swiss-born British author and public speaker.