They claimed it was a movement that would change society forever. Instead, it’s been buried six feet under by common sense.

For a decade, “woke” infected every corner of our lives. Cancel culture ran riot. Men became toxic. Virtue signalling was everywhere. And if you dared disagree? You’d be terminated on the spot.

But then something extraordinary happened. All over the world, people woke up.

In this explosive and uproarious takedown, Piers Morgan charts the spectacular collapse of the most ridiculous ideology in human history. With his trademark wit and fearless honesty, he exposes the hypocrites, destroys the myths, and celebrates the heroes who refused to surrender to the woke brigade.

But this isn’t just about pointing and laughing at the wreckage. With his unique blend of savage humour and surprising wisdom, Morgan offers a roadmap for navigating our post-woke world and a less divided, more sensible society.

Woke is Dead is the provocative, hilarious and essential read for anyone who wants to understand how an entire civilisation briefly lost its mind.

In The New Censorship esteemed academic, former journalist and activist Ayala Panievsky focuses on the unfortunate and unexpected mechanisms through which today’s media has inadvertently amplified the anti-democratic movement that looms over our societies. From the birth of ‘the strategic bias’ to weaponising liberal norms against liberal democracy, the populist right has found a way to exercise a more effective and socially acceptable type of silencing and manipulation. Instead of banning stories, they spread flows of disinformation, which take hours and days to debunk. Instead of silencing, they shout louder. Instead of blue-pencilling, they employ fake users, bots, and outrageous smear campaigns to dominate the conversation. Heavy-handed censorship is unnecessary when one can manipulate people to censor themselves, or simply stop listening.

Based on cutting-edge empirical research, personal experience in newsrooms and parliament corridors and a decade of living under populism in power in Israel, Panievsky will not only explain how we got here but also lay out what we all could (and should) do to restart the conversation and protect our right to know.

A gripping account of survival and recovery from internationally renowned writer and Booker Prize-winner Salman Rushdie

‘A masterpiece? Extraordinary’ Daily Telegraph
‘A story of hatred defeated by love’ Guardian

On the morning of 12 August 2022, Salman Rushdie was sitting onstage in upstate New York, preparing to give a lecture on the importance of keeping writers safe from harm, when a man in black – black clothes, black mask – rushed down the aisle towards him, wielding a knife. His first thought: So it’s you. Here you are.

What followed was a horrific act of violence that shook the literary world and beyond. Now, for the first time, Rushdie relives the traumatic events of that day and its aftermath, as well as his journey of healing and recovery.

This an intimate meditation on life, loss, love, art – and finding the strength to stand up again

A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE TIMES, GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, DAILY TELEGRAPH, SPECTATOR, INDEPENDENT, EVENING STANDARD, NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER AND TIME

‘An incandescent book about love and hard-won survival’
The Times

‘Salman Rushdie is a genius? A brave book by a brave man’
Evening Standard

‘Gripping? It reminds us of the things worth fighting for’
New York Times

No.1 Sunday Times bestseller, April 2024

‘As powerfully intimate as it is politically incendiary’ VOGUE
‘Private Revolutions could be a Netflix series, for family, violence and romance abound’ IRISH TIMES
‘A portrait of China through four women who refused to accept the life laid out for them. Incredible’ SUNDAY TIMES
‘A revelatory, moving and tender tale of hopes, fears and change’ PETER FRANKOPAN

Yuan Yang, the first Chinese-born British MP, tells the stories of four Chinese women striving for a better future in an unequal society. From June, who dreams of going to university rather than raising pigs, to Sam, forced into hiding as her activist peers are lifted from the streets, this is a singularly immersive portrait of a rapidly changing nation – and of the courage of those caught in the swell.

Nuanced and historically grounded, A. C. Grayling searches for middle ground in an otherwise incendiary debate. Looking at the history of cancellation, from Ancient Greek ‘ostracism’ through hemlock cups, witch trials and the House of Un-American Activities, Discriminations  is a timely examination of the state of our public culture and the chilling effect it’s having on intellectual discourse.

Through the lens of history, What Is Free Speech? shows us that freedom of speech is not an absolute from which societies and regimes have drifted or dissented at different times, but something more complicated and interesting.

Our modern conceptions of press and speech liberty, Dabhoiwala shows, were invented in Britain around 1700. The real history of freedom of expression is a story of countless fascinating men and women whose lives have shaped its principles and practices over the past 300 years – slaves and imperialists, poets and philosophers, plutocrats and revolutionaries. Ranging across Europe, North America and South Asia, and not neglecting other parts of the world, Dabhoiwala rejects celebratory platitudes about the past and present of free expression. Instead, his book explains how to think more deeply about free speech as a global as well as a local question – by tracing how we got into our current predicaments, showing that history complicates our contemporary presumptions, and suggesting fresh possibilities for the future.

The renowned author returns with a timely book about his journeys to three sites of conflict – Dakar, South Carolina, and Palestine – exploring how the stories we tell, and the ones we don’t, shape our realities.

‘An earnest and intimate exploration of locations of extreme injustice’ Oprah Daily

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Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, but soon found himself grappling with deeper questions about the destructive myths that shape our world.

First we join Coates on his inaugural trip to Africa – a journey to Dakar, where he finds himself in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and the ghost-haunted country of his imagination.

He then takes readers to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on the banning of his own work and the deep roots of a false and fiercely protected American mythology – visibly on display in its segregationist statues.

Finally in Palestine, Coates sees with devastating clarity the tragedy that grows in the clash between the stories we tell and reality on the ground.

Written at a dramatic moment in American and global history, this work from one of our most important writers is about the urgent need to embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.

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‘Coates exhorts readers, including students, parents, educators, and journalists, to challenge conventional narratives that can be used to justify ethnic cleansing or camouflage racist policing’ Booklist

‘Coats always writes with purpose . . . These pilgrimages for him, ground his powerful writing about race’ Associated Press

Suzanne Nossel, CEO of PEN America, the leading free expression organisation, argues that alongside the necessary and long-overdue elevation of minority voices in recent years, there has also arisen an uncompromising intolerance – most notably on university campuses and online – that wrongly equates a wide range of offensive speech with violence and seeks to shut it down. This has led to an escalating free speech arms race, from which everyone loses.

Charlotte Lydia Riley, historian of empire and editor of The Free Speech Wars, argues that accusations of cancel culture and defences of free speech are too often disingenuous attempts to fuel a culture war and so inhibit an important realignment in which hateful speech is at last being called out for what it is and the right to free expression is being extended to more people than ever before.

Published in conjunction with Intelligence Squared, the world’s leading curator of debate, this book is part of the THINK AGAIN series: short books that present two expert, contrasting but equally persuasive views in a single volume that can be read from either end.

It is about Leiya, who wants to escape the fate of the women in her village. Still underage, she bluffs her way on to the factory floor.
It is about June, who at fifteen sets what her family thinks is an impossible goal: to attend university rather than raise pigs.
It is about Siyue, ranked second-to-bottom of her English class, who decides to prove her teachers wrong.
And it is about Sam, who becomes convinced that the only way to change her country is to become an activist – even as the authorities slowly take her peers from the streets.

With unprecedented access to the lives, hopes, homes, dreams and diaries of four ordinary women over a period of six years, Private Revolutions gives a voice to those whose stories go untold. At a time of rising state censorship and suppression, it unearths the identity of modern Chinese society – and, through the telling, something of our own.