Tom hodgkinson biography

Tom Hodgkinson (born 1968) is a.
It's been 27 years since Tom Hodgkinson launched his magazine The Idler, advocating a slower pace of life with time for rest, play, cloud-spotting and creative.
SIDELIGHTS: Tom Hodgkinson worked for several years as a freelance journalist before he decided to start his own magazine.

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Idler

Idler is a company devoted to helping people to lead more fulfilled lives. We publish a bi-monthly magazine, produce online courses and run live events. We want you to slow down, have fun and live well!

Read a sample issue of the magazine online by clicking here.

Our story

Back in 1991, bored to tears by his job, 23 year old journalist Tom Hodgkinson lay on his bed and dreamed of starting a magazine called The Idler. He’d found the title in a collection of essays by Dr Johnson, himself a constitutionally indolent man. How to live, that was the question. How to be free in a world of jobs and debt? And curse this alarm clock.

Tom was fortunately sacked from his job and started to sign on. He wandered across the road to where his old friend, designer and writer Gavin Pretor-Pinney lived. Gavin was the kind of person who could help Tom to realise this dream. And he did. In August 1993, the pair produced issue one of the Idler. It had the sub-title “literature for loafers”. Dr Johnson was the cover star and there was an interview with magic mushroom guru Terence McKe

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Tom Hodgkinson: the hardest working man in slow business

A life of idleness

It’s been 27 years since Tom Hodgkinson launched his magazine The Idler, advocating a slower pace of life with time for rest, play, cloud-spotting and creative day-dreaming. He’s been its editor ever since, as well as writing several books on how to be idle, and developing a whole ecosystem of Idler events, courses, talks, retreats and festivals.

When the magazine made its debut, the Telegraph newspaper said Hodgkinson would need imagination to keep the joke going. Later, when he and some of his team were given jobs at The Guardian, the satirical magazine Private Eye called it “a one-joke Will Self fanzine staffed by friends of the former junkie”.

Hodgkinson is characteristically sanguine about such barbs. It got the magazine noticed, he says. “What they didn’t realise is that how you work and how you live is the biggest subject of all.”

The Great Resignation

Far from being a joke, The Idler‘s concerns seem more current

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Hodgkinson, Tom 1968–

PERSONAL: Born 1968, in England.

ADDRESSES: Home—Devon, England. Office—Idle Limited, Studio20, 24-28a Hatton Wall, London EC1N 8JH, England. Agent—Cat Ledger Literary Agency, 20-21 Newman St., London W1T 1PG, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Has worked as a freelance journalist; Idler, London, England, founder and editor, 1993–.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Matthew De Abaitua) The Idler's Companion: An Anthology of Lazy Literature, Ecco (New York, NY), 1997.

How to Be Idle, Hamish Hamilton (London, England), 2004, HarperCollins Publishers (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor of articles to Idler.

SIDELIGHTS: Tom Hodgkinson worked for several years as a freelance journalist before he decided to start his own magazine. The concept for the Idler came while Hodgkinson was reading a series of eighteenth-century essays by Samuel Johnson. In an interview with Richard Marshall for 3 AM online, the author explained the initial seed of the idea. "[Johnson] was describing the character of an Idler and what he was describing was