Book on the Chilcot Report to HoZ

Head of Zeus is to publish Not the Chilcot Report, a "masterly account of how a disaster was made", written by "passionate" British democrat, Peter Oborne.

Neil Belton, editorial director at Head of Zeus, bought world rights to Not the Chilcot Report from Andrew Gordon at David Higham Associates.

The Chilcot report, which is also referred to as the Iraq Inquiry, is a British public inquiry into the nation's role in the Iraq War. The inquiry was announced on 15th June 2009 by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and was chaired by Sir John Chilcot. It is due to be published in June or July of this year.

According to the publisher, Not the Chilcot Report is a "concise summary of what should be in the Chilcot Report". The publisher added: "Peter Oborne shows how the British government colluded in deceiving the public, grossly exaggerating the threat from Saddam Hussein. The book will prove that Tony Blair repeatedly misled the British people in his determination to stand with America at all costs."

The publisher continued: "The invasion of Iraq was ‘the defining calamity of the post-cold war era’, in Peter Oborne’s words. It has led to the collapse of the state system in the Middle East. Iraq is shattered, Syria may never be put back together again. And the great wave of refugees unleashed by this breakdown is threatening what is left of democracy in Turkey and the very existence of the European Union.

"Oborne provides a forensic examination of the way evidence was doctored and the law manipulated in order to justify a war for regime change. The government bent facts to fit its determination to go to war, Parliament failed to scrutinise wild allegations, the intelligence service was perverted, and the media lost its head."

Oborne said: "I hope that this short book, which is based very largely on evidence publicly presented to the Inquiry, will assist lay readers who want to make sense of Chilcot. It stretches to 35,000 carefully written words. The Iraq Inquiry by contrast is a reported 2 million words long -  which is approximately four times the length of War and Peace.”

Head of Zeus will publish Not the Chilcot Report on May 19th 2016.