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How to be idle

Speaker: Tom Hodgkinson
18 May 2005

Tom Hodgkinson insists that the Protestant work ethic has most of us in its thrall, and the idlers of this world have the odds stacked against them. He claims to have an antidote to the work-obsessed culture which puts so many obstacles between ourselves and our dreams.

He presents us with a laid-back argument for a new contract between routine and chaos, an argument for experiencing life to the full and living in the moment.
He ranges across a host of issues that may affect the modern idler: sleep, the world of work, pleasure and hedonism, relationships, bohemian living, revolution.

By drawing on the writings of such well-known apologists for idleness as Dr. Johnson, Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson and Nietzsche, his message is clear: take control of your life and reclaim your right to be idle.

Tom Hodgkinson was born in 1968 and studied English and loafing about at Cambridge. Entering the world of work was a rude shock and in 1993 he founded The Idler magazine in order to protest against the work ethic. Twelve years on he is still trying to be idle.