Strangers and Intimates

A Financial Times 'What to read in 2025' book

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What does it mean to have a private life?

From ancient times to our digital present, Strangers and Intimates traces the dramatic emergence of private life, uncovering how it became a protected domain, cherished as a space for intimacy, self-discovery and freedom. In this sweeping history, Tiffany Jenkins, an acclaimed cultural historian, 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, are we in danger of losing a part of ourselves? Jenkins reveals how privacy shaped the modern world and why it remains crucial for our personal and collective freedom – and why this freedom is now in mortal danger.

Today, as we share more than ever before and digital surveillance watches our every move, Jenkins asks a timely question: can private life survive the demands of the twenty-first century?