I have just heard that the great John Michell died on 24 April. An original and inventive thinker, his books were always a delight and an inspiration as were his columns in the Oldie. Over the years, I visited John a few times in his Powis Square flat to drink white wine till late. With great good humour, he would question everything you said, and make you look at life with a fresh eye. I remember him chuckling to me as I put forward some half-baked theory of life and saying: “The thing is, Tom, you’re still trying to make sense of it all. But you must see that the world is confusion. Confusion!”
The conservative critic Toby Young, writing in the Mail on Sunday, said: “this is an original, thought-provoking book” while also teasing me for being what he called “a fanatical anti-capitalist”. In the New Statesman, Zoe Williams was hugely positive about the book: “He is never boring; at times he is intensely readable.” She described the Idler as “a magazine-turned-book that was really everything you could possibly ask for from the modern pamphleteer: it was funny, original, unorthodox, cool in an effervescent, unstudied way, intellectual without the angst and defensiveness,” and concluded: “The ‘idle’ brand is a bit of red herring, I think. There is a serious, pioneering spirit underneath this velvet smoking jacket.” And in the Evening Standard, a thoughtful Ned Denny focussed on the Taoist elements of the book, calling the idea of idleness “wu wei” (ie the philosophy of non-action) for the West. “Add liberal doses of music, jovial company and deep woods to play in—all central to the idle, not to say Taoist, life—and you have a recipe for bright, happy people with need of neither television nor shrink. Who could ask for more?”
Alain De Botton, whose new book The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work is a great read, says of The Idle Parent: “Tom’s book came as a huge relief to the whole family. Suddenly, we no longer had to feel guilty that we hated days out at overpriced so-called attractions. Suddenly, it was OK to leave the kids to sort it out among themselves. Suddenly, it was OK to be responsibly lazy. This is the most counter-intuitive, but most helpful and consoling child-raising manual I’ve yet read.”
TH
"People ask me how I stay thin. It's a strict regime. It's a combination of supervised fad diets and amphetamines."