IDLER - Key Persons
Alice Smith has been art director for the Idler since 2009. She is responsible for the art direction of the magazine and the various illustrations, decorations and borders that you will see on our site.
Job Titles:
- Narrative Historian Antonia Fraser Lives in London and Has Six Children and Eighteen Grandchildren
Narrative historian Antonia Fraser lives in London and has six children and eighteen grandchildren.
Dr Mark Vernon is a psychotherapist, writer, broadcaster, and teacher. He presents several Idler Academy online courses. He has a PhD in philosophy, and degrees in theology and physics. His most recent books include The Idler Guide to Ancient Philosophy (Idler Books), Love: All that Matters (Hodder) and Jung: How to Believe (Guardian Shorts) - and he has books on friendship, belief and the good life too. Mark can often be heard on Radio 4's Moral Maze. He began his professional life as a priest in the Church of England. For more, visit markvernon.com
"The Idler Academy is better than drugs," says actress Emma Thompson. "And I should know, I've tried a few." Tom Hodgkinson invited Emma to become a patron of the Idler Academy after visiting her local bookshop in West Hampstead and discovering that she had ordered multiple copies of his first book, How to be Idle.
Ferdinand Mount is the former editor of the TLS and columnist for the Sunday Times. He is the author of The Liquidator, Umbrella, The Subversive Family, The British Constitution Now, Jem (and Sam), The Man Who Rose Ampersand, Of Love and Asthma, Heads You Win, The Condor's Head, Mind the Gap, and a memoir Cold Cream. His novel Fairness was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2001. His most recent book Prime Movers on twelve great thinkers from Pericles to Gandhi was published by Simon & Schuster in 2018.
John is the founder of QI and produced Not The Nine O'Clock News, Spitting Image and Blackadder. He is a philosopher and a fan of curiosity and Alan Watts.
Job Titles:
- Director of Information at QI
John is Director of Information at QI and co-founder of crowd publishing company Unbound. He regularly lectures at the Idler Academy on such disparate subjects as William Morris, laudanum and Lent
Documentary-maker Louis has been writing for the Idler since it began in 1993. He has interviewed a number of notable characters for the magazine, including David Soul, Bill Oddie and Colin Wilson.
Former model Lucy is now a photographer and horsewoman. She has four children, Otis, Merlin, Isaac and Tara.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Humanities and Human Rights at the University of Birmingham
Lyndsey Stonebridge is professor of humanities and human rights at the University of Birmingham (UK). Her previous books include Placeless People: Writing, Rights, and Refugees, winner of the Modernist Studies Association Book Prize and a Choice Outstanding Academic Title; The Judicial Imagination: Writing After Nuremberg, which won the British Academy Rose Mary Crawshay Prize for English Literature; and the essay collection, Writing and Righting: Literature in the Age of Human Rights. She is a regular media commentator and broadcaster. She lives in London.
Michael has been a great support to the Idler and its various projects, giving interviews and inviting Tom on the radio to talk about being a fl neur. In our Idler's Library you can see an hour long live interview with Michael where he discusses life without a proper job.
Paul Theroux's new novel Burma Sahib follows Eric Arthur Blair's itinerary through Burma, where he spent time in Rangoon and in postings to various provincial towns and districts. From his experiences he would emerge as George Orwell, celebrated novelist, essayist, journalist and poet. Burma Sahib is not only the product of Paul's observations and imagination, but also draws from Orwell's 1934 novel, Burmese Days, and his celebrated essays "A Hanging" and "Shooting an Elephant".
Paul Theroux (‘The world's most perceptive travel writer" - Daily Mail) is the author of many highly acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), The Mosquito Coast (1981) Riding the Iron Rooster (1983), and Mr Bones: Twenty Stories (2014). In 2015, Paul was awarded a Royal Medal from the Royal Geographical Society for "the encouragement of geographical discovery through travel writing". Paul's other awards include the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters Award for literature; the Whitbread Prize, for his novel, Picture Palace; and the James Tait Black Award, for The Mosquito Coast. His travelogue, The Old Patagonian Express: By Train through the Americas, and The Mosquito Coast were both nominated for the American Book Award. His novels Saint Jack, The Mosquito Coast, Doctor Slaughter and Half Moon Street have been made into films and his short-story collection London Embassy was adapted for a British mini-series in 1987. Paul holds honorary doctorates from three American universities and remains a highly sought-after speaker. He lives in Hawaii and Cape Cod.
Phil Manzanera is a British guitarist and music producer. The son of an English father and a Colombian mother, he rose to fame in the early 1970s as the lead guitarist of Roxy Music. Among his most recent works is his autobiographical album The Sound of Blue. He also co-produced the albums Rattle that Lock by David Gilmour, and The Endless River by Pink Floyd.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Astrophysics at the University
Prof. Chris Lintott is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, where his research ranges from understanding how galaxies form and evolve, to predicting the properties of visiting interstellar asteroids. He is Principal Investigator of the Zooniverse citizen science platform, and presents BBC's long-running Sky at Night. In 2023, he was appointed the thirty-ninth Gresham Professor of Astronomy.
Stephen Marche is a novelist and essayist. He is the author of half a dozen books, most recently Death of an Author - an AI collaboration under the pseudonym Aidan Marchine. He has written opinion pieces and essays for The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Esquire, Vanity Fair and many others.
Dr Tom Chatfield (@TomChatfield, www.tomchatfield.net) is a British author and tech philosopher. He has spoken about AI, tech ethics and digital culture at venues ranging from the UK and European Parliaments to Google, Meta, the US National Academy of Sciences and TED Global. His bestselling critical thinking textbooks and courses for SAGE Publishing are used across the world. His non-fiction books exploring digital culture - including How to Thrive in the Digital Age (Pan Macmillan) and Live this Book! (Penguin) - have appeared in over thirty languages. His debut novel, This Is Gomorrah (Hodder), was a Sunday Times thriller of the month, shortlisted for the CWA Steel Dagger and won France's 2020 Prix Douglas Kennedy. He speaks, writes and broadcasts internationally on technology and culture. Tom is currently a member of the British Library Advisory Council; Chair of the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society and co-Chair of the Copyright Licensing Agency; and an Associate at Perspectiva, researching the ethics of technology. He lives in Kent with his wife and two children.
Tom Hodgkinson is editor of the Idler and author of the best-selling manuals, How to Be Idle and How to Be Free. Other publications include a book on parenting, the Ukulele Handbook and a manual for creative entrepreneurs, Business for Bohemians.
Tom Hodgkinson is editor of the Idler and author of the best-selling manuals, How to Be Idle and How to Be Free. Other books include a book on parenting, the Ukulele Handbook and a manual for creative entrepreneurs, Business for Bohemians.
Tom was born in 1968 and was educated at Westminster School and Jesus College, Cambridge. He founded the Idler in 1993 and went on to join the Guardian newspaper in 1995 as a columnist and head of editorial development. He and partner Gavin Pretor-Pinney then quit to set up a creative consultancy and undertook editorial and advertising projects for Channel 4, Sony Playstation, Paramount Comedy Channel, John Brown Publishing, Mother ad agency and many more.
In 2002 Tom quit the commercial world and retired to a farmhouse on the coast of North Devon to write books. His first book How to be Idle was a global best-seller and was followed by How to be Free, The Idle Parent and Brave Old World.
He has also co-written The Book of Idle Pleasures (with Dan Kieran, later to launch crowdfunding publishing platform Unbound) and The Ukulele Handbook (with Gavin Pretor-Pinney).
Tricia Hersey is an artist, poet, theologian and community organiser. She is the founder of The Nap Ministry, an organisation that examines rest as a form of resistance by curating sacred spaces for the community to rest via Collective Napping Experiences, immersive workshops, performance art installations and social media. Tricia is a global pioneer and originator of the movement to understand the liberating power of rest. She is the creator of the Rest is Resistance and Rest as Reparations frameworks. Her research interests include Black liberation theology, womanism, somatics and cultural trauma. Tricia is a Chicago native and currently lives in South Georgia.
Job Titles:
- Is Director of the Idler Academy, Producing the Idler 's Live and Online Events and Courses
- Programming Director
A Drink with the Idler has turned out to be one of our lifelines! Such fun, wonderful commentary by you and the remarkable Mark, not to mention the delightful Victoria.
Victoria Hull is director of The Idler Academy, producing the Idler's live and online events and courses.
Victoria Hull was educated at St Mary's Ascot, St Paul's Girls School and St Andrews University. Following stints as a teacher, a researcher, an assistant producer on documentaries and a TV development executive, she created The Clerkenwell Literary Festival in 1997. She mixed established names with new fresh talent and cross-art acts. The festival attracted young and urban crowds. In 2002 she moved to a farmhouse in North Devon and spent the next few years running a smallhold with her small children. They kept a menagerie including bees, pigs, ferrets, rabbits, cats, an old pony and working Labrador Retrievers which Victoria bred. In 2011 she launched the Idler Academy and now lives in London.
Yasmin Ali is a chemical engineer, dedicated to developing renewable energy projects. Having worked in coal and gas fired power stations, oil and gas, district heating systems, and energy innovation, Yasmin transitioned away from fossil fuels into more sustainable energy systems over the course of her career. She has given over a hundred talks about engineering and energy, written for the BBC and Metro, featured in TV and radio programmes and completed a British Science Association Media Fellowship with the BBC's Science Unit. In recognition of her public engagement work, Yasmin has been awarded and shortlisted for multiple industry awards, including the 2020 Women's Engineering Society's top 50 female engineers in sustainability.