Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life

An Economist Book of the Year 2025

‘Brilliantly original . . . endlessly fascinating’ – Alice Loxton, author of Eighteen
‘An intricate cultural history . . . thought-provoking’ – The Sunday Times
‘Lucid and elegant’ – The Telegraph

From ancient times to our digital present, Strangers and Intimates traces the dramatic emergence of private life, and argues that it is now in mortal danger.

In this sweeping history, acclaimed cultural historian Tiffany Jenkins takes readers on an epic journey, from the strict separations of public and private in ancient Athens to the moral rigidity of the Victorian home, and from the feminists of the 1970s who declared that ‘the personal is political’ to the boundary-blurring demands of our digital age.

Strangers and Intimates is both a celebration of the private realm and a warning: as social media, surveillance and the expectations of constant openness reshape our lives, Jenkins asks a timely question: can private life survive the demands of the twenty-first century?