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From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the advert of the Web, everywhere you turn you are told that we live in age of unparalleled freedom. This is dangerously naïve. From the revolution in Iran that wasn’t to the imposition of super-injunctions from the filthy rich, we still live in a world where you can write a book and end up dead.After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of Communism, and the advent of the Web which allowed for even the smallest voice to be heard, everywhere you turned you were told that we were living in an age of unparalleled freedom.You Can't Read This Book argues that this view is dangerously naive. From the revolution in Iran that wasn't, to the Great Firewall of China and the imposition of super-injunctions from the filthy rich protecting their privacy, the traditional opponents of freedom of speech – religious fanaticism, plutocratic power and dictatorial states – are thriving, and in many respects finding the world a more comfortable place in the early 21st century than they did in the late 20th.This is not an account of interesting but trivial disputes about freedom of speech: the rights and wrongs of shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre, of playing heavy metal at 3 am in a built-up area or articulating extremist ideas in a school or university. Rather, this is a story that starts with the cataclysmic reaction of the Left and Right to the publication and denunciation of the Satanic Verses in 1988 that saw them jump into bed with radical extremists. And it ends at the juncture where even in the transgressive, liberated West, where so much blood had been spilt for Freedom, where rebellion is the conformist style and playing the dissenter the smart career move in the arts and media, you can write a book and end up destroyed or dead.

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At the beginning of the financial crisis, in September 2008, Gordon Brown called an emergency press conference in which he declared, 'we will do whatever it takes to restore stability in the financial markets'.He was to repeated the phrase ‘whatever it takes’ constantly in the following weeks.As Shadow Chancellor Brown would do whatever it took to restore Labour's economic credibility. As leader-in-waiting he would do whatever it took to acquire the crown. As Prime Minister he would do whatever it took to buttress his enfeebled regime, going as far instigating a rapprochement with Peter Mandelson, a figure he had come to despise. Determined, wilful, multi-layered in his complexity, Brown would always do whatever it took to survive.New Labour, as a political force, rootless and defensive in its origins, would similarly do whatever it took to retain support in what its founders regarded as a conservative country.Written by one of the most influential political commentators in the UK, the Independent's chief political commentator, Steve Richards, this political expose examines Gordon Brown's wildly oscillating career and the ruthless and sometimes shallow pragmatism displayed by New Labour as a whole.

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A passionate and entertaining guide to spotting and decoding the delusions we live under.Oil companies advertise their green credentials. Billionaires organise 'grassroots' political movements. Cuts that target the poor are billed as progressive. Casually dressed employees play table football in airy open-plan offices, but work longer hours than ever before. To Eliane Glaser, these are all signs of the maddeningly surreal gap between appearance and reality in modern life. With the melting away of conflicts between East and West in the Cold War and Right and Left in our politics, the big ideologies were consigned to history. But Get Real argues that agendas never really disappeared. They just went undercover, creating a looking-glass world in which reality is spun and vested interests appear in disguise.Busting the jargon and unravelling the spin, Get Real reveals the secrets about modern life that we were never supposed to know. It puts the truth and the power to choose firmly in our hands, because only by telling it like it is can we improve – and maybe even save – our world for real.

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A book for anyone interested to know more about how the world really works by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow.‘This is one of the most important books of our time.’ Walter Isaacson‘A masterpiece’ Dan Simpson, Post-Gazette THE NEW YORK TIMES #3 BESTSELLERUS foreign policy is undergoing a dire transformation, forever changing America’s place in the world. Institutions of diplomacy and development are bleeding out after deep budget cuts; the diplomats who make America’s deals and protect democratic interests around the world are walking out in droves. Offices across the State Department sit empty, while abroad the military-industrial complex has assumed the work once undertaken by peacemakers. Increasingly, America is a nation that shoots first and asks questions later.In an astonishing journey from the corridors of power in Washington, DC, to some of the most remote and dangerous places on earth – Afghanistan, Somalia, and North Korea among them acclaimed investigative journalist Ronan Farrow illuminates one of the most consequential and poorly understood changes in American history. His first-hand experience as a former State Department official affords a personal look at some of the last standard bearers of traditional statecraft, including Richard Holbrooke, who made peace in Bosnia and died while trying to do so in Afghanistan.Drawing on newly unearthed documents, and richly informed by rare interviews with warlords, whistle-blowers, and policymakers – including every living secretary of state from Henry Kissinger to Hillary Clinton to Rex Tillerson – War on Peace makes a powerful case for an endangered profession. Diplomacy, Farrow argues, has declined after decades of political cowardice, short-sightedness, and outright malice – but it may just offer a way out of a world at war.

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Do you remember what life was like before the crash?• When level-headed couples were still taking mortgages five times their joint income.• When the middle class was divided between the haves and the have yachts.• When Her Majesty's Government boasted that their 'light-touch regulation' of finance had abolished boom and bust, and laughed hysterically at anyone who disagreed.By Christmas 2008, eight banks had been part-nationalised, Woolworths had disappeared, unemployment had reached nearly two million and the country's debt had hit record levels. We are now a bankrupt nation.After the Great Crash of 2008, Americans could at least blame an incompetent right-wing government. But when the money ran out, Britain was ruled by left wingers who had grown up despising the 'funny-money' men. And yet, like the most gullible investors on Wall Street, New Labour prostrated themselves before the snake oil charmers of financial capital.Since they came to power in 1997, Nick Cohen has been taking the pulse of what has turned out to be the longest period of left-wing government in British history. Over a decade later, he reports from the sickbed of liberal England as battered and broken voters contemplate a remarkable shift. With splendid outrage and great compassion, Waiting for the Etonians, is an account of a country that, for the first time since the end of the Empire, is considering embracing the old ruling class it has despised for decades.

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By The Times columnist and acclaimed author of When They Go Low, We Go High. Start Again is a life-raft for all those who find themselves politically adrift and a rallying cry for a better kind of politics – As heard on the Today programmeBritain is today divided old against young, class against class, region against region, nativist against cosmopolitan, rich against poor and London against the rest. Our country is divided by generation, by education, by place and by attitude. Politics needs to be turned off and started again.In this time of tumult, when Britain is wrestling with the question of what sort of nation it wishes to be, its politics is stuck.Power is hoarded by a distant and unresponsive centre and our two largest political parties have both been captured by those on their outer edges.Too many of us have been left politically homeless.In Start Again, Philip Collins, Times journalist and until recently a lifelong Labour voter, offers a road map to a different political destination.Drawing on lessons from history Collins proposes new answers to today’s most urgent questions: questions of education, work, health, housing, security, nationhood, and of how we can achieve a better future.Hopeful, indignant and inspirational, this is a book for anyone who feels that politics no longer speaks to them.

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A short, sharp intervention in the crucial debate about the future of democracy, which has been brought to a head by events from Brexit to the Trump phenomenon.We live in strange days in the history of democracy.Every serious politician in the Western world supports democracy. Yet when the EU Referendum and American Elections both delivered the ‘wrong’ result, elites challenged the merit of the people’s will, and some even tried to block it. Preferring unelected institutions, from technocrats to the courts, self-appointed higher minds questioned whether voters are fit to be trusted with their own futures. Ours is the age of “I support democracy, but…”And yet the answer will never be to impose limitations. Popular democracy must offer better choices, rather than removing choice altogether. It’s time to defend democracy and fight for more it, with no ifs, buts or backtracks.

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