Tom Hodgkinson

Tom Hodgkinson is editor of the Idler and author of four books for Hamish Hamilton: How to be Idle, How to be Free, The Idle Parent and Brave Old World. With his partner Victoria Hull, he recently opened a bricks-and-mortar bookseller, coffeehouse and school in west London going by the name of the Idler Academy of Philosophy, Husbandry and Merriment.

TOM'S FAVOURITE SITES

Toby Young: No Sacred Cows - I often find myself in violent disagreement with Toby. For example, he has called the protestors at St Paul's Cathedral 'loons', when everyone else in the world is taking a serious interest in what they are saying. His Toryism sometimes veers on the self-parodic. But I think he has intelligence, humour and courage, and I'm always interested in his views. His recent 'free school' project really blew open the education debate and has led to all sorts of improvements to other schools. Teachers and governments are very anti-parent in general, and to start a pro-parent school was an interesting move.

Ian Bone: Anarchist in the UK - Ian Bone is a hard left anarchist and a real working class intellectual. This is his blog. While I take issue with many of his views - for example, he is leading a childish protest against Eton College right now - I do love his humour and wit. He often has something funny to say and is untiring in his constant attacks on privilege and injustice. He hates everyone: right, left, centre; fascist, communist, royalist. He hates the trades unions as much as the government. His idea of anarchism crosses over with mine: what we want is more leisure, not more work!

FT.com - The FT is the best of all newspapers because it appears to tell the truth and while it certainly has an agenda, it is open to debate. I am very interested, for example, in the rising price of gold and silver, and the FT offers excellent articles on such subjects.

Alibris - I'm a great buyer of second hand books and in the past I used Abebooks.co.uk which is a very useful service: with it you can search the databases of thousands of second hand booksellers and find excellent bargains. But it is owned by Amazon and I have serious ethical objections to Amazon because they sell books at wholesale prices which is unfair to booksellers. I think the cheap books thing may be a loss-leading way to gather a massive list of customers, to whom Amazon will in the future attempt to sell everything. Anyway, as a result of the Amazon monopoly, I am now using Alibris which appears to be a non-evil version of Abebooks.

Adam Buxton's Youtube Channel - Comedian Adam Buxton is a genius for our age. He combines satire and surrealism through brilliant comic characters such as clueless naturalist Countryman and embittered East European film director Pavel. Absolutely hilarious.

1 November 2011