In his ground-breaking new book, Sathnam Sanghera traces the legacies of British empire around the world.
‘A wonderful book’ Rory Stewart
‘Nuanced and deeply researched’ Financial Times
‘Not just a welcome corrective but a book for our times’ Peter Frankopan
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The British empire was built on slavery, but it also pioneered abolition.
It spread democracy, but it also seeded geopolitical instability.
It devastated nature but it also gave birth to modern notions of environmentalism.
In this urgent sequel to Empireland, award-winning author and journalist Sathnam Sanghera extends his examination of British imperial legacies beyond Britain to the wider world.
Travelling across outposts of the former empire from Barbados and Mauritius to India and Nigeria and beyond, Sanghera puts to bed the conventional balance-sheet view of imperial history where the good is merely weighed up against the bad. In Empireworld, Sanghera instead seeks out nuance to reveal how contradictory forces of the British empire have shaped our world and what they mean for our place within it today.
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‘An absolute masterpiece’ James O’Brien
‘Puts Sanghera in the firmament of great imperial historians’ Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, i
How do we know if racism really exists? And, if it does, how big a problem is it for the outcomes of people of colour? Only science has the answers to some of society's most pressing questions.
‘Fantastic. Full to the brim with practical tips and well-researched guidance, this is a comprehensive handbook for the realities of managing multiple relationships’ – PAUL BRUNSON, author and MAFS dating expert
'Warm, relatable, and informed AF' – MEGAN JAYNE CRABBE, author and presenter
The Non-Monogamy Playbook is the handbook for anyone curious about consensual non-monogamy: polyamory and open relationships.
This is a practical, joyful guide to the rules of non-traditional relationships. It uncovers the long history of non-monogamy, and explores why society today still favours monogamous, heteronormative relationships as gold standard.
Ruby's weaves in her own relationship learnings with humour and empathy, and offers empowering tools for dealing with the complexities - and joys - of polyamory. She provides expert but sisterly advice on setting boundaries and cultivating self-compassion, as well as ways to navigate the myriad practical considerations of sustaining multiple relationships.
The Non-Monogamy Playbook shows us that there's joy in having multiple people in your life (platonic, sexy, romantic), but with each connection there is added vulnerability. This is the ultimate modern guide to non-monogamy, helping you create confident, healthy relationships.
**A TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR**
'Quite simply, this book is a work of genius' Matthew Parris, Spectator
The second in a major two-part anthology uncovering the rich reality of life for queer men in London, from the end of the Second World War to decriminalization in 1967
In the 1940s, it was believed that homosexuality had been becoming more widespread in the aftermath of war. A moral panic ensued, centred around London as the place to which gay men gravitated.
Peter Parker's fascinating new compendium explores what it was actually like for queer men in London in this period, whether they were well-known figures such as Francis Bacon, Joe Orton and Kenneth Williams, or living lives of quiet – or occasionally rowdy – anonymity in pubs, clubs, more public places of assignation, or at home. It is rich with letters, diaries, psychological textbooks, novels, films, plays and police records, covering a wide range of viewpoints, from those who deplored homosexuality to those who campaigned for its decriminalization.
This second volume, from 1960 to 1967, shows how key elements in British society gradually changed their views on homosexuality, resulting in the landmark 1967 act by which it was no longer considered a crime if it took place between adults in private. This did not end violence, discrimination and prejudice, but it at least curbed official persecution. Some Men in London is a testament to queer life and its thriving, joyous subculture – a subculture without which the 1960s would have been immeasurably impoverished.
A collection of sexual fantasies from women around the world, Want is a revelatory, sensational and game-changing exploration of women's sexuality that asks, and answers: How do women feel about sex when they have the freedom to be totally anonymous?
**A TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR**
Quite simply, this book is a work of genius - Matthew Parris, The Spectator
An essential study of post-war gay London life... one of the best anthologies I have ever read - John Self, The Observer
With it’s wide-ranging selection, generous biographical notes and provocative bibliography, Some Men in London is a serious and important contribution to our understanding of Britain up to today - Fiona Sampson, The Tablet
An absolutely extraordinary book … about actually what life was like for homosexual men in London in the 1940s and the 1950s… It’s amazing - Dominic Sandbrook
The first part of a major new anthology which uncovers the rich reality of life for queer men in London
In the 1940s, it was believed that homosexuality had been becoming more widespread in the aftermath of war. A moral panic ensued, centred around London as the place to which gay men gravitated.
In a major new anthology, Peter Parker explores what it was actually like for queer men in London in this period, whether they were well-known figures such as John Gielgud, ‘Chips’ Channon and E.M. Forster, or living lives of quiet – or occasionally rowdy – anonymity in pubs, clubs, more public places of assignation, or at home. It is rich with letters, diaries, psychological textbooks, novels, films, plays and police records, covering a wide range of viewpoints, from those who deplored homosexuality to those who campaigned for its decriminalisation.
This first volume, from 1945 to 1959, details a community forced to live at constant risk of blackmail or prison. Yet it also shows a thriving and joyous subculture, one that enriched a mainstream culture often ignorant of its debt to gay creators. Some Men In London is a testament to queer life, which was always much more complex than newspapers, governments and the Metropolitan Police Force imagined.
‘A brilliant, glittering intelligence’ Sunday Times
On Women brings together Susan Sontag's most fearless and incisive writing on women, a crucial aspect of her work that has not until now received the attention it deserves
Written during the height of second-wave feminism, Sontag's essays remain strikingly relevant to our contemporary conversations. At times powerfully in sync and at others powerfully at odds with them, they are always characteristically original in their examinations of the 'biological division of labour', the double-standard for ageing and the dynamics of women's power and powerlessness.
As Merve Emre writes in her introduction, On Women offers us 'the spectacle of a ferocious intellect setting itself to the task at hand: to articulate the politics and aesthetics of being a woman in the United States, the Americas and the world.'
‘Boldly provocative’ iNews
‘On Women demonstrates a powerful mind and equally forceful personality’ The Herald
'Required reading for everyone who lives in an unruly human body... elegant, fierce, and profound' Roxane Gay
Size discrimination harms everyone. Acclaimed philosopher Kate Manne shows how to combat it.
For as long as she can remember, Kate Manne has wanted to be smaller. She can tell you what she weighed on any significant occasion: her wedding day, the day she became a professor, the day her daughter was born. She's been bullied and belittled for her size, leading to extreme dieting. As a feminist philosopher, she wanted to believe that she was exempt from the cultural gaslighting that compels so many of us to ignore our hunger. But she was not.
Blending intimate stories with trenchant analysis, Manne shows why fatphobia matters, now more than ever. Over the last decades, bias has waned in every category except one: body size. Here she examines how anti-fatness operates – how it leads us to make devastating assumptions about a person's attractiveness, fortitude and intellect, and how it intersects with other systems of oppression. Fatphobia is responsible for wage gaps, medical neglect and poor educational outcomes. It is a straitjacket, restricting our freedom, our movement, our potential. Fatphobia is a social justice issue.
In this urgent call to action, Manne proposes a new politics of ‘body reflexivity’ -- a radical re-evaluation of who our bodies exist in the world for: ourselves and no one else. When it comes to fatphobia, the solution is not to love our bodies more. Instead, we must dismantle the forces that control and constrain us, and remake the world to accommodate people of every size.
In the #MeToo age, US debate over licit sex has split into two camps: one insists that consent solves the problem of sexual coercion, while the other equates sexual pleasure with the patriarchal erotics of silence and mystery. Manon Garcia rejects both positions, arguing that consent is a faulty legal threshold but essential to the joy of good sex.
This unflinchingly honest memoir shines new light on the complex intersections of gender identity, sexuality, sex and queerness. Join Harry on his personal journey amongst the fraught and contradictory worlds of contemporary gay culture and re-examine the unique patterns of your own queerness along the way
In April 2019, Liam Konemann idly began work on what he thought of as ‘the appendix’ - a record of ongoing transphobia in the UK that he came across. But when his mental health began to spiral, he turned his attention to a different topic instead: how do we find beauty in transmasculinity? And how do we maintain it in a world stacked against us?
The Appendix explores transphobia in UK media, as well as the trauma of living in a society constantly debating you. Liam explains his time spent ‘stealth’ after moving to the UK, his false belief that witnessing the transphobia by documenting it would lead people to change their behaviours - that if he could only show them the effects on people like him, it would all stop - and the peaks and troughs of anxiety. More so, he turns the focus to the more positive representations and experiences, capturing - as he sought - the beauty in transmasculinity.
A gripping new investigation into the underbelly of digital technology, which reveals not only how costly the virtual world is, but how damaging it is to the environment. If digital technology were a country, it would be the third-highest consumer of electricity behind China and the United States.Every year, streaming technology generates as much greenhouse gas as Spain — close to 1 per cent of global emissions.One Google search uses as much electricity as a lightbulb left on for up to two minutes.
It turns out that the ‘dematerialised’ digital world, essential for communicating, working, and consuming, is much more tangible than we would like to believe. Today, it absorbs 10 per cent of the world’s electricity and represents nearly 4 per cent of the planet’s carbon dioxide emissions. We are struggling to understand these impacts, as they are obscured to us in the mirage of ‘the cloud’. The result of an investigation carried out over two years on four continents, The Dark Cloud reveals the anatomy of a technology that is virtual only in name. Under the guise of limiting the impact of humans on the planet, it is already asserting itself as one of the major environmental challenges of the twenty-first century.
In November 2019, Paul B. Preciado was invited to speak in front of 3,500 psychoanalysts at the École de la Cause Freudienne’s annual conference. Causing a veritable outcry among the assembly, Preciado called for a radical transformation of psychoanalytic discourse and practices, denouncing its complicity with the ideology of sexual difference.
The Sunday Times bestselling story of the landmark international judgement that brought an end to Britain's colonial rule in Africa by the author of EAST WEST STREET and THE RATLINE
Men are responsible for all unwanted pregnancies. Why? Ovulation is involuntary. Ejaculation is not. It is also true that...
- Men are 50 times more fertile than women
- Birth control is hard to access, use, and comes with numerous side effects
- Vasectomies are less risky than tubal litigations
Yet, it's women who are expected to do the work of pregnancy prevention. Why must women be responsible for men's bodies, as well as their own?
Rather than endlessly exploring how and why we control women's bodies in the highly polarised anti-abortion and pro-choice 'debate', Ejaculate Responsibly makes a witty and unflinching case for why men must be held accountable for their reproductive choices. There are zero consequences for men who ejaculate irresponsibly. It's time to shift the responsibility - and burden - of pregnancy prevention onto men.
'A gorgeous manifesto' Oprah Daily
'A tactical, full-throated cry for men to step up' Vogue
A scintillating, richly peopled, impeccably researched history of the New York coastal enclave that, over the last century, became an iconic site of queer liberation
Remarkable storytelling and deep reportage: A page-turning account of a brutal urban wildfire, and a sweeping exploration of our rapidly changing relationship with fire
