Bloomsbury pulls Church exposé

Bloomsbury has withdrawn a book on the decline of the Church of England days before publication, according to reports.

That Was The Church That Was: How the Church of England Lost the English People by Andrew Brown and Linda Woodhead was due for publication on 11th February as a Bloomsbury Continuum title.

However reviewers who had received copies are said to have been asked to return them, with the book now listed as "currently unavailable" on Amazon.

Brown, who writes regularly for the Guardian, is a winner of the Orwell Prize for Political Writing; Woodhead is professor of the department of politics, philosophy and religious studies at Lancaster University. The publisher's blurb describes their book as a "relentlessly honest and surprisingly entertaining" account of "the dramatic and contentious story of the disappearance of the Church of England from the centre of public life."

According to a report in the Washington Post, Bloomsbury has confirmed that there has been a legal complaint against the book, with Damian Thompson in The Spectator saying it contains rumours and speculation about the sexual identity of key figures in the established church and is “a compendium of (the church’s) most malicious gossip.”

Bloomsbury declined to comment further to The Bookseller.