Amid an epidemic of loneliness and ‘friendship recession’, what can the history of friendship teach us? In this talk, Tiffany Watt Smith, historian and author of Bad Friend: On Joyous, Imperfect Love explores how ideas about friendship have changed across times and places, reflects on the strange task of writing about her own friends, and argues we need a messier, more expansive vision of this vital bond if we are to survive 21st century life. 

Tiffany Watt Smith writes about the history of emotions. Her books, which have been widely translated, include Bad Friend (Faber, 2025), Schadenfreude (Profile, 2018) and The Book of Human Emotions (Profile, 2014). A BBC-AHRC New Generation Thinker, she is a regular contributor on BBC Radio, a TED speaker and in 2019 was awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize.