Tel: 0207 221 5908. Please call in office hours (closed Mondays) to book an event or request any information.
Download and print your own version of the freedom manifesto by clicking here.
This Little Piggie Stayed at Home
Download the Idler Price List, listing all the books we sell, plus t-shirts and other stuff.
I live there. Its the ultimate boring, ugliest place on earth. People walk a centimetre an hour in town, two people take up the whole walkway. There’s interbreeding, we have the most ugliest people here because of it. Cornish gits look at u like you’re a scraggled cat or worse. They’re fat and probably eat [...]
Pubs: Full of angry ex-squaddies Amenities: Wadsworth 6X brewery Trowbridge in Wiltshire Down – I did my art foundation course there for a year, and still teeter on the verge of madness when I drive round the ring road. It has a higher murder rate than Chicago, per capita, with none of the excitement. The [...]
To my disappointment, Barnstaple has already been nominated. But my Devonian colleagues have so far overlooked Torrington… Most of the peope who live there can actually bite there own elbows (try it). Name witheld
Positioned nicely in the middle of a ‘shit hole triangle’ made up of Burnley, Halifax and Rochdale, Todmorden or Tod slides under the low standards of its neighbouring towns. Alcohol is popular in Tod, a quick glance down at the side of any road reveals that Tennent’s Super is the beverage of choice for Tod’s [...]
There is a common mis-conception that Tiverton is a nice, pretty little market town that overlooks the moors. Don’t trust the Devon tourist board: it’s a heaving, grey pit of nothingness. Margaret Drabble�s novel �The Witch of Exmoor” contains the following passage: “He gets himself dropped off at a service station just beyond Taunton. Thence [...]
Tintern Abbey. It must be said that Wordsworth’s famous “Lines” were composed “A Few Miles Above” it. He couldn’t stand the godforsaken town either.
There is one building of note here, the old Tipton library; a listed Carnegie building, now boarded up and covered with unimaginative graffiti. A big chunk of lottery and City Challenge money was pumped into the place though if you can make out what the locals are saying they’ll describe the town as “a fucking [...]
A back water cross roads of a village whose sole purpose seems to be to perpetuate every backward village stereotype that there is. Distanced from the main road to the North and the Welsh border to the South by several miles and the present day by at least a century. This two pub, one shop [...]
For most of its life, Tillicoultry (from the Gaelic “Tullich Cul Tir” — “At the foot of this hills”) was an unassuming mill town on the River Devon. But that would only qualify the town as bland, not crap. However, in the early 80s, “popular” TV sports commentator Dougie Donnelly appeared in the first of [...]
The last time I ventured to this place I saw a diddycoy walking with his dishevelled horse, hitting it with a stick and muttering swear words. Further on the walk I saw two burnt out, abandoned cars next to the sign ‘Welcome to Tilbury’… if nothing else, it was an accurate welcome. Then past the [...]
People from Taunton know that they don’t have it too bad. They do not live with the perpetual stench of sulphur that hangs over Bridgwater, and they have even avoided the excesses of incest that bedevil neighbouring, and aptly named, Watchet. As for Chard, well that’s somewhere even holidaying Glaswegian’s give a wide berth. Taunton, [...]
Basically, a very long high street, pubs at both ends and a Co-Op in the middle, situated between the economic crapspots of Pontypridd and Cardiff. The town seems to be populated entirely with be-cariganed old ladies and some of the surliest adolescents outside Merseyside. The lack of architectural beauty and cultural life obviously goes without [...]
Not so much a town as a mortuary. Industry has long departed, leaving the residents to shuffle round the town’s meagre consumer options like zombies in a George A Romero movie – while seagulls shit on them. Daniel Etherington “SOUTHERN BASTARDS FUCK OFF” The Crowtree leisure centre dominates the centre of this town. Rusting and [...]
If the Daily Mail were a town, it would be Sutton. The entire place reeks of intolerance, sexual repression and aspirational interior decoration. A festering carbuncle formed on the extremity of the Victoria Line, Sutton today maintains a large population of unsuccessful middle management commuters, who can be seen of a weekend scurrying around town [...]
Amenities: Chip shops My home town of Stockton on Tees, in Cleveland. The man who invented matches was from there, you know. Local torpor can be seen symbolised in the fact that railways were invented there, and they couldn’t even be arsed to make a theme park out of that. Having moved out at the [...]
Stonehaven is apparently a picturesque old fishing village 15 miles south of the oil capital of Europe, Aberdeen. It is in fact a grotty cesspit infested with seagulls and seagull shit. Stonehaven is the worst type of Scottish town, full of the 21st Century type of caveman, a drinking, fighting, takeaway eating, womanising, craptacular asshole. [...]
I visited Stoke several years ago and I have to say that it I quite possibly the worst place I have ever been (after Hull). There seemed to be a grey charcoal colouration to every element of the city. The paths, roads, buildings and the people seemed to carry the same grey gloom with them [...]
Amenities: The actor who plays Frasier Crane’s dad in the American sit-com Frasier once owned a house here. Stockport is a small town in South Manchester. Much of Engels’ research for Marx’s Communist Manifesto was based on the apalling working conditions in the town’s hat mills. And to be honest it’s gone down hill ever [...]
I wrote to the local paper complaining that the town centre is full of drunk yobs and slappers whose main interest is pissing up the wall of Barclays Bank after an evening getting wankered on Bacardi Breezers in the wittily-named Cobarna (hardy har-har). I went on to say that the town has a range of [...]
Having lived in St Albans since 1975 I have witnessed many changes to this historical and frankly suffocating satellite town. We have no cinema and more importantly no hospital, courtesy of 52 years of Conservative local government. We do have lots of pubs though: you can either drink with nauseating morris dancing CAMRA members or [...]
A 32 page book from Mr Gwynne, giving the principle parts of speech and basic grammatical elements. An essential component of any library, this is a beautifully typeset booklet which has been hand-sewn by Mr Brett. £8.95.
READ MORE …
Tom Hodgkinson's literary guide to husbandry. 'A delightful read,' James Delingpole, Mail on Sunday. 'Hugely inspiring,' Sarah Bakewell, New Statesman. 'Bizarre yet always beguiling,' Daily Mail. Illustrated by Alice Smith and typeset by Christian Brett. Signed first edition hardback. £16.99.
READ MORE …
The 2011 issue of the Idler is devoted to the idea of small business as an alternative to the grind of the nine-to-five. Tom also tells the story of how he and Victoria Hull set up the Idler Academy.
READ MORE …
The new 'Back to the Land' issue features a major interview with David Hockney who has also contributed two sketches. Essayists include Paul Kingsnorth, Harry Mount, Penny Rimbaud, Jay Griffiths and Simon Fairlie,.
READ MORE …
350 page Idler, a collection of radical essays by Alain De Botton, Penny Rimbaud, John Mitchinson, Jay Griffiths, Paul Kingsnorth, Oliver James. Published 17 June 2009. In Stock. Order now.
READ MORE …
Order Now. Published 5th March. "Wise, funny, practical and personal, The Idle Parent puts the fun back into parenting." Oliver James
READ MORE …
Take control of your life and reclaim your right to be idle. SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR.
READ MORE …
A sumptuous compendium of one hundred pleasures, each lovingly described and illustrated.
READ MORE …
"Packed with wit, anecdotes and ideas ..." Word Magazine
READ MORE …
"Very funny...should be at the top of Tony Blair's reading
list." The Times
READ MORE …
Recommended to anyone interested in either angling or doing nothing.
READ MORE …
"Read this eye-opening and amusingly written book" Daily Mail
READ MORE …
The Idler is an annual, book-shaped magazine that campaigns against the work ethic. It was founded in 1993 by Tom Hodgkinson and his friend Gavin Pretor-Pinney. The intention of the magazine is to return dignity to the art of loafing, to make idling into something to aspire towards rather than reject. As well as providing a radical and thought-provoking read, the Idler is also very funny. MORE …
"The great direction which Burton has left to men disordered like you, is this, Be not solitary, be not idle: which I would thus modify;- if you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle." Idle Idols: Samuel Johnson
Designed by Noble Savage | © 1993 - 2012 The Idler