Iain Dale, MD of Biteback Publishing has acquired World rights for Alan Cochrane’s diaries on the Scottish referendum campaign. Cochrane is the Scottish Editor of the Daily Telegraph. Alex Salmond My Part in his Downfall, The Cochrane Diaries will be published by Biteback on 18th November, price £18.99 hardback.
Alan Cochrane - ‘that ghastly man from the Telegraph’, as Alex Salmond’s wife called him – emerged as one of the Unionist heroes in Scotland’s recent independence battle. Using his daily newspaper columns, and drawing on his long list of Westminster and Scottish contacts to plot behind the scenes, the veteran journalist mounted a mission all of his own to see off the Scottish Nationalist threat and bring about the downfall of the SNP leader.
Now he reveals how the UK was really won. Through the pages of his detailed diary, kept secretly throughout the three years of the build-up to the referendum, he offers insights into every stage of the historic campaign.
With his access to David Cameron, Alistair Darling, Gordon Brown and everyone in between, he exposes the cynical, the chaotic, the incompetent and the cruel world of politics, sparing no one from his withering observations.
As the polls narrowed on the eve of September 18, the increasingly bitter fight for Britain brought out the best and the worst in the characters involved, while Cochrane looked on. Unique among his media peers, he not only documented the unfolding events but came to play a part in his country’s biggest ever political story.
Newspaper serialisation rights are available.