Welcome to the History Extra podcast, fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine.

What's the difference between private and public life? And where should we draw the line between the two?

Over the centuries, these boundaries have often been blurred

as Tiffany Jenkins explores in her book Strangers and Intimates.

In this episode, she speaks to Lauren Good about everything from the rigid separation

of the public and private spheres in ancient Athens

to the privacy-busting spectacle of Big Brother.

Lauren began by asking Tiffany to give an overview of what she explores in the book.

I was always very interested in privacy and secrecy. I thought both were important.

And I was very struck with the contemporary discussions about privacy.

They're often very tech-focused, many books in the last decade, talking about social media.

But I thought privacy would obviously have a longer history.

It didn't just come from nowhere.

It's a not unnatural thing.

Additionally, a lot of other books, 19th century focus, talk about the valuation of privacy in America and

Britain with a very famous article called The Right to Privacy. But my question with that was,

well, how did privacy come to be so valued that we could have kind of panics about it in the

19th century? So I knew I had to look back. I was very, very surprised to find, but it's not so much rooted

as we might assume in domestic furnishings, in corridors and curtains or in property laws,

both of which are important and do kind of have a kind of historical moment really in the 18th century,

particularly corridors where they become part of houses.

But no, I was interested in when did people begin to set themselves apart,

...