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Standing at the Canadian National Exhibition one night last month, watching a friend of mine haggling with a carnie over the price of a stuffed monkey in red vinyl pants, I was reminded why the end of August is the saddest time of all: The school year approaches to eclipse our happiness.

It's been a long time since I was in school, and frankly those memories are tarnished now, thanks to an interview I did with a London dominatrix, during which I discovered that we had gone to the same primary school in Toronto and, worse, had been traumatized by the same piece of playground equipment; at least she'd done something productive with her fear.

So as August wound down, I had to lend my friend three bucks to score the monkey, which stared at us reproachfully as we drank margaritas and watched a Tina Turner impersonator rollin' on the river.

Some people love the beginning of September – the smoothness of unsullied notebooks, the rasp of new jeans, the fresh disinfectant in classrooms and hallways.

Me, I just smell the tang of the burial mound in the air. Sophie Howarth, though, is in the first camp; she's as keen as the mustard that mom puts on the first sandwich of the year. Why else would she open the School of Life in this, the most depressing week of the calendar?

Not that her little shop – where you can take a course on the nature of love, or enlist the services of a psychotherapist, or ask a question of an airline pilot – is depressing. On the contrary, it's quite charming, tucked away on a leafy street in London's Bloomsbury neighbourhood.

Really, there is a certain amount of nerve in opening up a place of education in Bloomsbury; it's like bringing drunks to Newcastle. Not only is it home, historically, to the Bloomsbury Group – there's a blue plaque honouring turbaned serial shagger Ottoline Morrell around the corner – but several of the greatest learning institutions in London are located within a three-block radius. Charles Darwin lived five minutes away. The British Museum, whose governors once considered giving patrons a literacy test as a condition of entry, is a stone's throw.

But Howarth saw a hole in the market. Specifically, in the continuing-education market. “I was frustrated that people took all these courses but never confessed to it because it's all so dowdy,” she says, holding out the word “dowdy” as if it were a dead mouse. “I thought, why is education synonymous with a lack of style?”

Howarth spent a year developing a curriculum for the School of Life, which centres on five areas: work, love, politics, family and play. She's canvassed psychotherapists to see what recurring modern anxieties might be addressed, corralled famous friends such as the philosopher/writer Alain de Botton (who's teaching a six-week course on love, along with a former priest) and artist Martin Parr (who's leading a photography tour of Britain). There will be psychotherapists on call for one-time sessions, because, Howarth believes, many people benefit most from their first experience of therapy, “so why not offer a bespoke session?”

The devil is supposed to make an appearance at the school's launch today – in the person of a seven-foot-tall performance artist. Otherwise, spiritual content is largely restricted to the secular sermons on Sunday – “not ironic,” says Howarth, “but not too moralistic either.” A team of bibliotherapists is on hand to provide “prescriptions” (reading lists, in other words) suited to individual tastes.

Howarth, a quick-talking redhead who used to run the public-education programs at the Tate Modern gallery, says the goal of her school is to help people live “happier and wiser lives.” In other words, it fulfills the function that family, church and friends would have in previous generations.

We're relentless little self-improvers, aren't we – although we're perhaps not so different from the Victorians with their mania for moral uplift through education. In London these days, you can learn to ride a horse and sail a boat, or enroll your preschooler in etiquette lessons taught by a genuine gentleman's valet. You can hear a lecture on the history of cider-making in the 17th century or the evolution of the armchair. You can learn to butcher a pig, roast it with an apple, and carve it properly at table. You can even, apparently, learn to love.

Classes at the School of Life will take place in a groovy underground den, its walls painted with a mural by artist Charlotte Mann, and chaise longues in place of rickety desks. I ask Howarth if she's worried that her school will be perceived as merely an upscale Learning Annex.

She says, “What's the Learning Annex?”