Tiffany Jenkins

Podcast #321: The Demise of Private Life Managing Editor Iona Italia talks to Tiffany Jenkins about her fascinating and provocative new history, 'Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life.'

Managing Editor Iona Italia talks to Tiffany Jenkins about her fascinating and provocative new history, 'Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life.'

Eight books to look out for in January Upcoming history and non-fiction titles that have caught my eye

My pick of last month's history and non-fiction.

Interview: Tiffany Jenkins How ideas about private and public life have evolved since the Reformation

Some weekend reading from me: an interview with @tiffanyjenkins.bsky.social exploring the history of the self, and of private and public life, since the Reformation mathewlyons.substack.com/p/interview-...

Interview: Tiffany Jenkins How ideas about private and public life have evolved since the Reformation

New on the Broken Compass: an in-depth interview with @tiffanyjenkins.bsky.social about her brilliant book Strangers and Intimates, which explores the rise and fall of the private life and the history of the self.

Opinion | What destroyed ‘the right to be let alone’ Millions of Americans began eagerly erasing the public and private dividing line long before the internet.

"Today, there is little distinction between the public and private world," @tiffanyjenkins.bsky.social writes.

"We blame the convenient scapegoat of the moment: the internet. But this gets the timeline wrong. By the time social media arrived, we were already living in a post-private world."

Opinion | What destroyed ‘the right to be let alone’ Millions of Americans began eagerly erasing the public and private dividing line long before the internet.

American privacy died long before social media or the internet. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

A very find list indeed.

🧠 Ideas winners 🧠

THE IDEOLOGICAL BRAIN by @leorzmigrod.bsky.social

OPEN SOCRATES by @agnescallard.bsky.social

PROTO by @laurainparis.bsky.social

STRANGERS & INTIMATES by @tiffanyjenkins.bsky.social

DON’T FORGET WE’RE HERE FOREVER by Lamorna Ash

With privacy/AI books by @orinkerr.bsky.social @rcalo.bsky.social @superwuster.bsky.social @tiffanyjenkins.bsky.social
@simson.net @casssunstein.bsky.social @emilymbender.bsky.social @alexhanna.bsky.social

The best books of 2025 Gladiators and dictators, wolves and Beatles feature in our list this year

Delighted that Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life is an @economist.com book of the year. www.economist.com/culture/2025...

Sophie Calle and the Limits of Surveillance The artist who made privacy her medium

The artist Sophie Calle shows that in our rush to surveil and be surveilled we have overlooked the fundamental fact that the most important parts of human experience remain invisible.

open.substack.com/pub/tiffanyj...

Lice combs, vaginal syringes and cesspits: at home in 17th century Holland The room is dark, the lighting deliberately low. At its centre stands a solitary object: a yellow and green earthenware vessel decorated with biblical symbolism. It’s a fireguard – or ‘curfew’...

These intimate objects reveal a life more collective, communal and precarious than ours.

✍️ Tiffany Jenkins

The radical power of sentimentality When Samuel Richardson’s Pamela was published in 1740, it unleashed something unprecedented in literary history. This epistolary novel about a virtuous servant girl resisting her predatory master saw...

Michelangelo dismissed Flemish art because it encouraged viewers to emote rather than contemplate.

✍️ Tiffany Jenkins

Tennyson was young once A new biography of the formative years of the Victorian poet illuminates an unparalleled historical moment of vulnerability and wonder.

A new biography of the formative years of the Victorian poet illuminates an unparalleled historical moment of vulnerability and wonder.

Tennyson was young once | @mathewlyons.bsky.social

engelsbergideas.com/reviews/tenn...

How American privacy died Is Oprah to blame? Paul Natkin/Getty Images.

‘300 hours of raw footage, filmed over seven months, revealed the dirty laundry behind the facade’ | Tiffany Jenkins

How American privacy died

Big tech didn’t kill privacy. We did. My debut for @unherd.com unherd.com/2025/09/how-...

Greetings. I realized I missed your posts of supermarkets and film stars.

Setting Man Free from Men Tiffany Jenkins’ new book is a passionate defence of the value of privacy. The ability to keep some things private is at the heart of human creativity, freedom, and happiness, she argues. Perhaps even this does not go far enough.      

Tiffany Jenkins’ new book is a passionate defence of the value of privacy. The ability to keep some things private is at the heart of human creativity, freedom, and happiness, she argues. Perhaps even this does not go far enough.      

I en tid, hvor mange deler deres inderste med omverdenen, argumenterer Tiffany Jenkins for det modsatte - at holde sit privatliv for sig selv.

Særligt på arbejdspladsen kan det være uhensigtsmæssigt at dele for meget: buff.ly/8Gnx4m4

Setting Man Free from Men Tiffany Jenkins’ new book is a passionate defence of the value of privacy. The ability to keep some things private is at the heart of human creativity, freedom, and happiness, she argues. Perhaps even...

"It is crucial for human freedom, indeed for a civilised society, to acknowledge that human beings aren’t simply political or communal animals."

I reviewed Tiffany Jenkins' illuminating history of privacy/private life via @quillette.bsky.social

quillette.com/2025/08/29/s...

BBC Radio 4 Extra - The History of Secrecy, 2. God's Secrets Tiffany Jenkins explores the power of secrets in religions.

9:30am TODAY on @BBCRadio4Extra

The History of Secrecy
Ep 2 of 5, God's Secrets

The purpose and power of objects and secrets in religion. Tiffany Jenkins explores the idea of secret knowledge. From 2016.

BBC Radio 4 Extra - The History of Secrecy, 1. The Age of Secrecy An exploration of the idea of secret knowledge.

9:30am TODAY on ⁦‪@BBCRadio4Extra‬⁩

The History of Secrecy
Ep 1 of 5, The Age of Secrecy

Tiffany Jenkins explores the idea of secret knowledge. Back in the Middle Ages could alchemy reveal secrets of nature? From 2016.

Lovely Andy Goldsworthy retrospective @ National Galleries Scotland. Moving, playful and a little dark.

Here's 361E: Dr. Tiffany Jenkins discusses STRANGERS AND INTIMATES: THE RISE AND FALL OF PRIVATE LIFE, which traces the evolution of the private realm from the ancient world to its current shifting and precarious status. @tiffanyjenkins.bsky.social

turnthepage.blubrry.net/2025/07/31/t...

‘Fraid not.

When sex becomes a spectacle The bedroom has become a broadcast studio, and what was once private has transformed into the ultimate public performance.

When sex becomes a spectacle | Tiffany Jenkins

engelsbergideas.com/notebook/whe...

When sex becomes a spectacle The bedroom has become a broadcast studio, and what was once private has transformed into the ultimate public performance.

The bedroom has become a broadcast studio, and what was once private has transformed into the ultimate public performance. My piece for
@engelsbergideas.bsky.social engelsbergideas.com/notebook/whe...

Summer reading recommendations from a newspaper. (In the pic, the second para below is highlighted.) Maureen Lipman, actress I will be taking to Malta Shuggie Bain because my daughter and Rula Lenska told me it was dazzling and I believe them where I might not have believed the reviews. Also Shouting in the Evenings by James Hayes, a memoir by the actor who has been in most of the National Theatre's plays over the past 50 years. I saw it on Gyles Brandreth's shelf and said, "I'd love to read that." When I got home I looked at the cover and it said, "A helluva good read - Maureen Lipman," leading me to believe I have read it but just forgotten. So I will jolly well read it again. Third book would be Kiss Myself Goodbye by Ferdinand Mount. I am halfway through this startling memoir of the many lives of his Aunt Munca. It is "a voyage into a vanished moral world" and she is one of life's unforgettable characters.

Happens to us all, Maureen.

Thomas Mann and the European disease of nihilism The vicious battle of ideas behind the continent's World Wars has migrated East.

It has been said The Magic Mountain--published 100 years ago--is a "summing up of the European soul and mind”; we must realise this encompasses, no less, Europe’s anxious encounter with Asia.

My @newstatesman.com essay on Thomas Mann's East-West dialogue:

www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2024/1...

Damn History, indeed! Thanks for the shoutout!