Olivia Laing on Art, Solitude, and The Lonely City at 10 (Part One)

Olivia Laing is known as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary literature. Their work is renowned for its capacity to make abstract ideas feel precise, intimate, and beautifully thought through without ever talking down to the reader. Their books include the number one Sunday Times bestseller The Garden Against Time, Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency and, most recently, The Silver Book: a bewitching love story set during the making of Fellini’s Casanova and Pasolini’s Salò.

In June 2026 Laing came to Intelligence Squared for a one-off celebration of the ten-year anniversary of their seminal work, The Lonely City. Hailed as ‘a new kind of literature’ when first published, The Lonely City is both a personal quest to master the art of being alone, and an investigation into how artists have reckoned with isolation. The book asks questions that resonate in our increasingly digital and divided world. What does it mean to be lonely? How do we connect with others? Does technology draw us closer together, or keep us apart?        

Laing was joined live at Union Chapel in London by Charlie Porter, as they reflected on the legacy of The Lonely City, the paperback publication of The Silver Book and what loneliness, intimacy, solidarity and connection mean in a world of rising fascism.

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