The Idler Academy

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 McKenna. Contributors included a young journalist called Louis Theroux (pictured above at the Idler Festival, 2019). The magazine has since enjoyed a number of incarnations. In the nineties it was published by the Guardian newspaper, then by Ebury publishing. Tom published the Idler as an annual collection of essays until 2014, then relaunched the mag in 2016. Victoria Hull and Tom Hodgkinson Victoria Hull and Tom Hodgkinson The Idler Academy The Idler Academy, founded at a festival in 2010, is the Idler’s educational offshoot. It is a school which offers online courses in the classical liberal arts and practical skills. From March 2011 to December 2015 we ran a small bookshop, café and event venue in Notting Hill. The Idler Academy teaches philosophy, calligraphy, music, business skills, English grammar, ukulele, public speaking, singing, dancing, drawing, self-defence and other subjects. Here you can educate yourself in the ideas of Plato or learn the ukulele, either online or at an event or retreat. A dancing lesson with the Mudflappers at Festival No 6 The Idler Academy was born at a festival. Founders Tom and his partner Victoria Hull had always been festival-goers, and in 2008 they were invited by the founders of the Secret Garden Party to run a series of literary talks. They were given a yurt and built a medieval garden in the shade of a lime tree. They put on talks from Crass’s Penny Rimbaud, QI’s John Mitchinson, poet Clare Pollard and radical economist Andrew Simms. In 2009 Tom and Victoria took the Idler Academy to the Port Eliot Festival in Cornwall. They have also appeared at Wilderness, Shambala, Byline and the Good Life Experience. In 2018 they launched the Idler Festival in Hampstead, London. Photo credit: Monika S. Jakubowska Idler fans can now subscribe to the Idler Academy online course programme. There are over 60 courses with new courses are added each year. In 2019 the team launched the Idler Audio Channel with podcasts from Stewart Lee and more. Team Idler