Here are 81 books that A Very British Coup fans have personally recommended if you like
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I see no distinction between the personal and the political. All art is, therefore, a political act, and literature especially, since the author gets inside the reader's head. In 1984, the use of a pen is punishable, never mind having an unorthodox opinion; novels are written by machines—commodities like jam or bootlaces, to pacify the proles. (A.I. novels outcompeting human ones?) Yes, novels entertain, and that's OK, but the best way to change your outlook is to let you understand the human condition a little better. That is why I want more from a political thriller than just the same old lies, corruption, sex, and power at the heart of government.
I keep returning to this and reading different things into it every time. As with Little Man, this is not the West Wing/Thick of It classic political thriller, but it is told from the perspective of an ordinary Joe. Unlike Little Man, where the political message is woven in seamlessly, 1984 is a full-on polemic written by a man with little time left in an attempt to shape opinion. It is, though, well-plotted and hangs together really well as a novel (barring the sections where Smith reads from the book).
Often read as an anti-communist allegory, I see it as so much more: sending us a warning against all who think only they are right, seeking to impose their will on others, be they autocrats like Putin, Trump, Xi Jinping, or Farage.
1984 is the year in which it happens. The world is divided into three superstates. In Oceania, the Party's power is absolute. Every action, word, gesture and thought is monitored under the watchful eye of Big Brother and the Thought Police. In the Ministry of Truth, the Party's department for propaganda, Winston Smith's job is to edit the past. Over time, the impulse to escape the machine and live independently takes hold of him and he embarks on a secret and forbidden love affair. As he writes the words 'DOWN WITH BIG…
I see no distinction between the personal and the political. All art is, therefore, a political act, and literature especially, since the author gets inside the reader's head. In 1984, the use of a pen is punishable, never mind having an unorthodox opinion; novels are written by machines—commodities like jam or bootlaces, to pacify the proles. (A.I. novels outcompeting human ones?) Yes, novels entertain, and that's OK, but the best way to change your outlook is to let you understand the human condition a little better. That is why I want more from a political thriller than just the same old lies, corruption, sex, and power at the heart of government.
This book made me think, reflect, and laugh (if a little unnervingly!). It is a quirky tale that warns us of threats to civil liberties from AI and corporate tech giants in a Hitch-hikers' Guide to the Galaxy meets 1984 way.
Some of the writing is lyrical and literary, sometimes perplexing and banal. I was not entirely convinced by the science behind the science-fiction elements, but that is perhaps allowed because of the Theatre of the Absurd approach the author takes.
'Fun and erudite' Sunday Times 'Snort-inducingly funny' Daily Mail 'One of the cleverest books you'll read this year' Telegraph
Every system, however immaculate, has a few little glitches.
The latest in domestic tech should have predicted that businessman George Mann was about to murder his family. But instead it crashes and leads to the wrong man being caught and punished.
Are there gremlins in digital giant Beetle's ubiquitous wearable tech, talking fridges and Dickensian droids? Have they been hacked, or is something even more sinister going on?
With the clock ticking philandering Beetle CEO Guy Matthias, conflicted national security agent…
I see no distinction between the personal and the political. All art is, therefore, a political act, and literature especially, since the author gets inside the reader's head. In 1984, the use of a pen is punishable, never mind having an unorthodox opinion; novels are written by machines—commodities like jam or bootlaces, to pacify the proles. (A.I. novels outcompeting human ones?) Yes, novels entertain, and that's OK, but the best way to change your outlook is to let you understand the human condition a little better. That is why I want more from a political thriller than just the same old lies, corruption, sex, and power at the heart of government.
I was blown away by this book: one of those books that makes you think differently about the world and stays with you. Your classical political thriller is set at the heart of government: the big cheeses and their power games; this, though, is about two ordinary (but exceptional!) young people and how the political climate of Weimar Germany and the rise of Nazism affected their lives.
I much prefer a book like this, about life and what it means to be human. The “thriller” aspect comes from your fear of what might happen and whether their love alone can pull them through. I loved the characters, both the main ones and the secondary ones.
From the bestselling author of Alone in Berlin, his acclaimed novel of a young couple trying to survive life in 1930s Germany
'Nothing so confronts a woman with the deathly futility of her existence as darning socks'
A young couple fall in love, get married and start a family, like countless young couples before them. But Lammchen and 'Boy' live in Berlin in 1932, and everything is changing. As they desperately try to make ends meet amid bullying bosses, unpaid bills, monstrous mothers-in-law and Nazi streetfighters, will love be enough?
The novel that made Hans Fallada's name as a writer,…
I see no distinction between the personal and the political. All art is, therefore, a political act, and literature especially, since the author gets inside the reader's head. In 1984, the use of a pen is punishable, never mind having an unorthodox opinion; novels are written by machines—commodities like jam or bootlaces, to pacify the proles. (A.I. novels outcompeting human ones?) Yes, novels entertain, and that's OK, but the best way to change your outlook is to let you understand the human condition a little better. That is why I want more from a political thriller than just the same old lies, corruption, sex, and power at the heart of government.
This play profoundly affected me (even though it only played out in my head and not on a real stage). It is both disturbing and moving. It is absurdist, but that nightmarish detachment from reality somehow sends an even stronger shock to the system in its warnings about how fascism takes hold: that strong human tendency towards social thinking (emerging neuroscience research suggests a substantial overlap between physical pain and social pain).
This is much more than just an allegory on authoritarianism, however. Recently, people have used it to explain how easily society gave up on a public health approach to the ongoing Covid pandemic. Maybe getting COVID-19 repeatedly and, at some point, eventually getting long-term COVID-19/turning into a Rhinoceros is not so bad?
If a book is based on personal experience it has an edge to it. So when I write my thrillers, even though they contain ample doses of make-believe, I try to anchor them to something which has happened to me. When I stook as a parliamentary candidate for the Conservatives in the 2015 UK General Election, a young supporter took his own life because of excessive bullying from within the party itself. This inspired me to write my first political thriller. It's important to me as a writer to make my stories as believable as possible.
Check out Tom Watson’s insider account of similar behaviour within the Labour Party as in House of Cards. Once Deputy Leader, he quit his position because of the “brutality and hostility” within the ranks. It is a good depiction of the sacrifices and betrayals required and shows no party system has the moral high ground when it comes to bullying and duplicitous behaviour.
'A prescient page-turner about secrets, lies, ruthless ambition and betrayal' SARAH VAUGHAN
'A rare view from the inside of the Machiavellian machinations for power . . . Fascinating' HARRIET TYCE
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In their remarkable debut political thriller, Tom Watson, former Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, and Imogen Robertson open the doors to The House, a place of ambition, hope, friendship . . . and betrayal.
Once allies, Labour MP Owen McKenna and Conservative Minister Philip Bickford now face each other across the House of Commons as bitter enemies. Then the reappearance of a figure from their past forces them…
Romance and chick-lit books hooked me as a young adult. It was this genre that inspired me to write. Since publishing my first book Gut Feeling in 2012 I’ve since written three chick-lit novels and a holiday rom-com screenplay. The fiction world of perfectly unperfect romance never fails.
If you’re looking for a fresh and funny take on romance then, The Midwife Crisis is the book for you. Written in my family’s hometown of Galway, in Island, not only could I relate to this author's story, but it was a new take on a normal love genre.
★★★★★ A love story that pulls on your heart strings
★★★★★ A beautiful read
★★★★★ A stunning read worthy of five thousand stars
As a midwife, nothing shocks Orla Broder. She's seen it all; from fainting to forceps, epidurals to epiphanies, tears to triumphs.
Miles from her Galway home, immersed in the magic and madness of an Edinburgh labour ward, not to mention the wild hospital nights out, Orla had never given much thought to her own happy ever after....
That is until an unexpected financial contractor arrives at the hospital ruffling feathers, including her own. To complicate things further,…
I’ve been obsessed with London since childhood. The English side of my family lived and worked throughout the city, and a day out with my father walking its streets was my greatest treat. He was a doctor, so a London trip could involve shopping for medical equipment, trawling bookshops, an afternoon at his tailor, or pub crawls where he seemed to know everyone. I’ve always been aware of the eccentricity of the place, which still thrills me. I really struggled to choose these books because there’s just so much material that I had to leave out. But I hope what I’ve chosen might be of interest.
Henry Mayhew’s sprawling record of nineteenth-century London can be overwhelming, but his ear for the vernacular and eye for weird detail means that the reader can dip in and find something.
London’s population exploded in the nineteenth century, bulked out by a huge number of itinerant workers. Mayhew interviews these people–in the prologue to the first volume, he describes himself as a "traveller in the undiscovered country of the poor"–and because he gives no judgment on their lives, the book feels more like a modern documentary.
The voices are one thing; Mayhew’s statistics are another–"expenditure in ham sandwiches supplied by street sellers is £1,820 yearly…a consumption of 436,800 sandwiches." Anyone who thinks that Dickens’ writes grotesques should read this. The first book that really brought old London alive for me.
London Labour and the London Poor is a masterpiece of personal inquiry and social observation. It is the classic account of life below the margins in the greatest Metropolis in the world and a compelling portrait of the habits, tastes, amusements, appearance, speech, humour, earnings and opinions of the labouring poor at the time of the Great Exhibition.
In scope, depth and detail it remains unrivalled. Mayhew takes us into the abyss, into a world without fixed employment where skills are declining and insecurity mounting, a world of criminality, pauperism and vice, of unorthodox…
History tells us who we are and what we can become. History in the Andes tells us that people of the African Diaspora have been a part of building that part of the world into what it is today for over 500 years. I have been fascinated by learning this history and inspired by leaders, writers, artists, and fellow historians who consider themselves Afro-Andean and are building the future. For 25 years now, I have been scouring historical archives in Peru, Spain, and the US to find more sources to help us recognize and understand that history as we use it to build a better, more just present and future.
Did you know that African and indigenous people worked together in what is today Bolivia and Argentina? They were both enslaved and those who had bought their freedom. Bolivia, high in the mountains, might seem remote, but in the 1500s and 1600s its rich silver mines were the motor of the Spanish Empire’s economy. And Spain was the superpower that dominated Europe, America, and the Atlantic.
Bolivia and the zones that supplied it with coerced and free workers, mules, food, wine, textiles, and the stimulant coca leaf was called Charcas, and it was the most valuable and important part of all of the Americas at the time.
This wonderfully detailed book by an outstanding Bolivian historian tells the story of the Black and indigenous laborers who made this possible.
This book investigates the phenomenon of slavery and other forms of servitude experienced by people of African or indigenous origin who were taken captive and then subjected to forced labor in Charcas (Bolivia) in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Richard Vinen is a Professor of History at King's College, London, and the author of a number of major books on 20th century Europe. He won the Wolfson Prize for History for his last book, National Service. Vinen is a specialist in 20th-century European history, particularly of Britain and France.
It is rare for anyone with real power to write an interesting diary. They do not have the time or the self-awareness. Harold Macmillan is the exception because his diaries are fantastic and those that he writes as prime minister are much better than those that he writes earlier in his career. He is such a lonely man (England’s most famous cuckold) and one senses that his diary is his only real confidant. He is also so extraordinarily aware of historical change. He is himself a considerable historian and one who reads very widely even when prime minister. There is a moment in the early 1960s when he gets back to Downing Street after a weekend in the country and writes in his diary about having read Theodore Zeldin’s, The Political System of Napoleon III – not exactly bedtime reading for most people but a work that inspires Macmillan into…
Richard Toye is a Professor of Modern History at the University of Exeter. He has published 19 non-fiction books on historical topics and was the co-presenter of the 2018 Channel 4 documentary Churchill's Secret Affair. In 2007 he won the Times Higher Education Young Academic of the Year Award for his book Lloyd George and Churchill: Rivals for Greatness.
This is the book that really turned me on to political history – though I suppose I must have been interested already, or my parents wouldn’t have bought it for me for my fourteenth birthday! It’s a fairly light read, but it’s a great way of learning the outlines of what happened in British politics in the thirty-odd years after 1945. When it was published it still seemed as though Margaret Thatcher would be Prime Minister forever …
As BBC's "Panorama's" chief political reporter for 13 years, Michael Cockerell won three major television awards. Apart from this book he also made a two-part documentary on television and Number 10. His previous book is "Sources Close to the Prime Minister".