Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life - Hardcover

Jenkins, Tiffany

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1529034167 ISBN 13: 9781529034165

Publisher: Picador, 2025

Synopsis

An Economist Book of the Year

'Brilliantly original . . . endlessly fascinating' – Alice Loxton, author of Eighteen
'An intricate cultural history . . . thought-provoking' – The Sunday Times
'Lucid and elegant' – The Telegraph

From ancient times to our digital present, Strangers and Intimates traces the dramatic emergence of private life, and argues that it is now in mortal danger.

In this sweeping history, acclaimed cultural historian Tiffany Jenkins takes readers on an epic journey, from the strict separations of public and private in ancient Athens to the moral rigidity of the Victorian home, and from the feminists of the 1970s who declared that ‘the personal is political’ to the boundary-blurring demands of our digital age.

Strangers and Intimates is both a celebration of the private realm and a warning: as social media, surveillance and the expectations of constant openness reshape our lives, Jenkins asks a timely question: can private life survive the demands of the twenty-first century?

About this title

About the Author

Dr Tiffany Jenkins is a writer, cultural historian and broadcaster. She is the author of the acclaimed Keeping Their Marbles: How Treasures of the Past Ended Up in Museums and Why They Should Stay There. She’s a former honorary fellow in the History of Art at the University of Edinburgh and a former visiting fellow in the Department of Law at the London School of Economics. She wrote and presented the BBC Radio 4 series ‘A History of Secrecy’ and ‘Contracts of Silence', about the rise of non-disclosure agreements, and has appeared regularly as a critic on Saturday Review and Front Row. She is a trustee of the British Museum. Her opinion pieces have appeared in The Guardian, The Observer, the Financial Times, the Scotsman and The Spectator. She divides her time between London and Sussex. Strangers and Intimates is her third book.

From the Back Cover

A brilliantly original history of privacy with a simple and urgent argument: private life is a precious and sustaining resource that must be defended.

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1529034167
• ISBN 13: 9781529034165
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 464