Towards the end of 2021, Britain had been frogmarched into an escalating series of surreal calamities. Brexit was a disaster, the NHS was in crisis, the government was bathed head-to-toe in impropriety, senior Tories were still acting as though the public purse was their personal feed-trough, and the air crackled with anger about PartyGate. All of which led to an inglorious start to 2022: the year the UK saw two monarchs, three prime ministers and four chancellors.

From Boris Johnson, who trashed our international reputation and handed billions to his mates so they could ineptly fight a pandemic while he stayed at home, shagging and acting as a super-spreader; to Liz Truss, a drive-by prime minister who managed to kill off the queen and crash the economy in a single week. And now we’re led by Rishi Sunak, who doesn’t know how to use a credit card, drives a pretend car, and grinningly promises even more poverty.

Four Chancellors and a Funeral delivers more of Russell Jones’s signature scathing wit, combining a detailed historical record of 2021 and 2022, with acerbic commentary, all of it leavened by jokes at the seemingly endless maelstrom of failures, nincompoops and hypocrisies.

‘A magnificent tome, full of acerbic wit and groaning with disaster. This book is the only Brexit benefit I can think of. Send it to anyone thinking of voting Tory’ Jemma Forte, broadcaster and writer

‘With scathing wit and insight, Russell Jones delivers the hilarious and terrifying no-holds-barred roast we’ve all been waiting for’ Peter Stefanovic, journalist and broadcaster

‘As ever, Russell’s writing is just the job if you’re in need of a laugh AND your blood pressure is dangerously low . . .’ Mitch Benn, comedian and writer

‘Masterful … you won’t look at Britain in the same way ever again’ OWEN JONES

After the Second World War, Britain’s overseas empire disintegrated. As white settlers from Rhodesia returned home to a country they barely recognised, Commonwealth citizens from Asia and the Caribbean migrated to a motherland that often refused to recognise them. Race riots erupted in Liverpool and Notting Hill even as communities lived and loved across the colour line. In the 1950s and 60s, imperial violence came home too, pervading the policing of immigrant communities, including their sex lives. In the decade that followed, a surge of support for the far-right inspired an invigorated anti-racist movement.

These tensions, and the imperial mindset that birthed them, have dominated Britain’s relationship with itself and the world ever since: from the simplistic moral equation of Band Aid to the invasion of Iraq, in the tragedy of Stephen Lawrence and the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics, we see how Britain’s contradictory relationship with its past has undermined its self-image as a multicultural nation.

Imperial Island tells a story of immigration and fractured identity, of social strife and communal solidarity, of people on the move and of a people wrestling with their past. It is the story that best explains Britain today.

‘An eye-opening study of the empire within‘ SHASHI THAROOR
‘Clear, bold, refreshing’ LUCY WORSLEY

‘A tale of grief and memory awash with dark humour and wit’ Spectator
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“Up there,” she says, “I’m just another little old lady. But down here, at the pool, I’m myself.”

For the people who swim there each day, the local pool is a haven of unexpected kinship and private solace. For Alice, her daily laps have become the ritual that gives her life meaning, even though she may not remember the combination to her locker or where she put her towel.

But one day, a crack appears deep beneath the surface of the water, and then another, and then another. The pool must close for repairs, and with that Alice is plunged into dislocation and chaos.

Away from the steady routines of her swimming, she is engulfed by difficult memories of her own past. And as her sense of home, and of herself, slip further out of her grasp, her daughter must navigate the newly fractured landscape of their relationship.

From the internationally bestselling author of The Buddha in the Attic comes a novel about memory and loss, mothers and daughters, the stories that make up a life, and what happens when they start to unravel.
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‘I’m in awe of how this beautiful, graceful novel can hold so much grief and loss and love in its pages: a literary gem.’ Nicci Gerrard

‘An unforgettable novel about mothers and daughters by a spellbinding talent’ Daily Mail

In Assad: The Triumph of Tyranny, Con Coughlin, veteran commentator on war in the Middle East and author of Saddam: The Secret Life, examines how a mild-mannered ophthalmic surgeon has transformed himself into the tyrannical ruler of a once flourishing country.

Until the Arab Spring of 2011, the world’s view of Bashar al-Assad was largely benign. He and his wife, a former British banker, were viewed as philanthropic individuals doing their best to keep their country at peace. So much so that a profile of Mrs Assad in American Vogue was headlined ‘The Rose in the Desert’. Shortly after it appeared, Syria descended into the horrific civil war that has seen its cities reduced to rubble and thousands murdered and displaced, a civil war that is still raging over a decade later.

In this vivid and authoritative account Con Coughlin draws together all the strands of Assad’s remarkable story, revealing precisely how a young doctor ensured not only that he inherited the presidency from his father, but has held on to power by whatever means necessary, continuing to preside over one of the most brutal regimes of modern times.

‘A pre-eminent digital-age seer. . . a great collected narrative of human hope and human failure’ Tim Adams, Observer

‘Extraordinary. . . the culmination of many years of highly original and innovative work’ Niall Ferguson, Bloomberg

One of the most iconoclastic thinkers of our time offers a brilliant new theory of how society works

What leads to political turbulence and social breakdown? How do elites maintain their dominant position? And why do ruling classes sometimes suddenly lose their grip on power?

For decades, complexity scientist Peter Turchin has been studying world history like no-one else. Assembling vast databases mined from 10,000 years of human activity, and then developing new models, he has transformed the way we learn from the past. End Times is the result: a ground-breaking account of how society works.

The lessons, he argues, are clear. When the balance of power between the ruling class and the majority tips too far in favour of elites, income inequality surges. The rich get richer, the poor further impoverished. As more people try to join the elite, frustration with the establishment brims over, often with disastrous consequences. Elite overproduction led to state breakdown in imperial China, in medieval France, in the American Civil War – and it is happening now.

But while we are far along the path toward violent political rupture, Turchin’s models also light the way to a brighter future. Drawing insight from those occasions in history where the balance was restored, End Times also points towards a different future: an escape from the patterns of the past.

‘A wonderful book, beautifully conceived’ ADAM NICOLSON

‘Thoughtful, moving, honest’ CAL FLYN

Work in the countryside ties you, soul and salary, to the land. But often those who labour in nature have the least control over what happens there.

In this beautifully observed book, Rebecca Smith traces the stories of foresters and millworkers, miners, builders, farmers and pub owners, to paint a picture of the working class lives that often go overlooked.

Living in rural areas means being surrounded by natural beauty, but for many it also demands hard work, precarity, fewer opportunities and – increasingly – being pushed out of the place your family might have called home for generations. In Rural, Rebecca Smith brings together the reasons we all love nature with the histories of life in its midst, and a prescient look at the dynamics for rural areas today. Why are our farmers struggling to make a profit on a pint of milk? What has Airbnb done to small communities in places like the Lake District?

In a gorgeous tour of Scotland, England and Wales, this is a book for anyone who loves and longs for the countryside, whose family owes something to a bygone trade, or who is interested in the future of rural Britain.