Announcements

Biteback Publishing has acquired the first book by former Prime Minister Liz Truss.

 

In Ten Years to Save the West, Truss – who as Prime Minister sought to champion an agenda of limited government and individual freedom – will argue that the rise of authoritarianism around the world and the adoption of fashionable ideas propagated by the global left give us barely a decade to preserve the economic and cultural freedom and institutions that the West holds so dear.

Liz Truss said: “After more than ten years as a government minister, I’ve seen up close the threats posed to global democracy. Across the free world, we face massive, unaccountable administrative states and complacent political and corporate establishments which are not only putting the brakes on economic growth, but also hampering our ability to stand up to authoritarian regimes like China and Russia.

“I want to share the lessons from my experience in government and those international meetings where I was often the only conservative in the room and demonstrate that we have stark choices to make if we wish to avoid a managed decline of the Western architecture that has presided over generations of relative peace and prosperity.”

Peppered with newsworthy anecdotes from her time in public life – such as her memorable last meeting with Queen Elizabeth II, her challenges to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping as Foreign Secretary, her encounters with the Trump administration as Trade Minister, and her dismay at the political class’s attempts to betray Brexit – this book will be a timely warning about the perils facing conservatism in the years ahead.

In it, Truss will warn that too many of her fellow conservatives have allowed themselves to be captured by the left-wing influences that set the agenda and frame the debate in so many institutions from the media to academia and the corporate world.

She will also call for a return to the alliances built by leaders such as Reagan, Thatcher and others in another era when Western values were under siege. Only if the West recommits to building both strong societies and strong economies, unhampered by big government and regulation, Truss argues, can we guarantee voters a free and meaningful choice in their destiny.

Ten Years to Save the West will be published in April 2024. It will be published in the US by Regnery.

For more information please contact suzanne.sangster@bitebackpublishing.com

Biteback will publish Lord Ashcroft’s next political biography, of Angela Rayner, Labour’s Deputy Leader, in 2024.

 

Read Lord Ashcroft’s announcement here:

“With the possibility that a Labour government could be in power by or before January 2025, the time has come to announce that my newest book project is a biography of Angela Rayner, Labour’s Deputy Leader.

Since becoming an MP in 2015, Ms Rayner has been hard to ignore. Sometimes controversial, always spirited, usually outspoken and unfailingly committed to the socialist causes she holds dear, she has quickly become one of the best known politicians on the national stage. Her impressive climb to the top of the Labour Party means that she is now on the brink of exerting enormous influence over British citizens.

As with all of my political biographies, this book will be independent, open-minded and even-handed, letting the facts speak for themselves. The research I’ve done already has convinced me that Ms Rayner is certainly one of the most interesting figures operating in Westminster today.

In recent months I have been working on a biography of a rising star in Conservative Party politics, Kemi Badenoch. That book, together with the Angela Rayner project, will be published ahead of the general election, which must be held no later than 24 January 2025. And next month, All to Play For, my fully revised and updated biography of Rishi Sunak, which was first released in 2020 as Going for Broke, will also be published.

Over the next 15 months or so, British politics promises to be fascinating. I look forward to doing my best to enlightening voters about what makes some of its principal players tick.”

 

Discover more of Lord Ashcroft’s publications here.

Biteback Publishing has acquired Islands: Searching for truth on the shoreline by BBC Home Editor Mark Easton, to be published in October 2022.

No man is an island, wrote John Donne. Easton argues the opposite: that we are all islands, and it is on the contradictory shoreline where isolation meets connectedness, where ‘us’ meets ‘them’, that we find out who we truly are.

In this personal exploration of our fascination with islands and ‘islandness’, Easton chronicles a sweep of 250 million years of history: from Pangaea, the supercontinent mother of all islands, to the first intrepid islanders pointing their canoes over the horizon, to his own journeys of discovery among the hidden corners of our world. Roaming from Arran to Antigua, he illustrates how understanding islands and island syndrome might help humanity get closer to the truth about itself.

 

Mark Easton joined the BBC in 1986 before being appointed Political Editor at Channel 5 News in 1996 and Home and Social Affairs Editor at Channel 4 News in 1998. He returned to BBC News as Home Editor in 2004, a post he still holds.

Olivia Beattie, Editorial Director at Biteback, acquired UK Commonwealth rights excluding Canada from Andrew Gordon at David Higham Associates.

 

Easton said: ‘My ambition in this book is to investigate the almost magical qualities of the encircling shoreline, to chronicle the journey of physical islands and explore the psychological islands that form the great archipelago of humankind. If you want to get a better understanding of the human condition in all its impossible complexity, islands are good places to go.’

Beattie said: ‘With memories of lockdown still blisteringly fresh, Mark’s exploration of the boundaries between isolation and connection, between individuality and the wider world, between “us” and “not us”, has a remarkable resonance. Islands is a deep dive into geography, myth, literature, politics and philosophy, but above all it’s an inventive and hugely original insight into how cultures bloom and how geography shapes human nature.’

 

Islands: Searching for truth on the shoreline will be published on 11 October, accompanied by a major publicity campaign.

For more information please contact suzanne.sangster@bitebackpublishing.com

Biteback snaps up 'gripping and accessible' account of lead-up to Ukraine war by Puri

Published 11/08/2022

Biteback Publishing has snapped up a “gripping and accessible” account of the key moments leading to the Ukraine war by former diplomat Samir Puri.  

Olivia Beattie, editorial director, acquired world rights to Russia’s Road to War with Ukraine: Invasion Amidst the Ashes of Empires from Darryl Samaraweera at Artellus. It will publish 25th August 2022.  

The synopsis says: “Russia has brought bloodshed and suffering to Ukraine at the behest of Putin’s vision of a greater Russian sphere of influence. For their part, however, some of the Western countries that dominate the EU and NATO have over several years unrealistically raised Ukraine’s expectations of joining these bodies, while others have dashed them, leaving Ukraine without formal allies and fatally exposed to Russian aggression. 

“Russia’s Road to War with Ukraine is a gripping and accessible exploration, peppered with eye-witness accounts, of the key moments of drama leading to the 2022 invasion, offering insights into the missed opportunities to avert the war.” 

Discover more here