Julie Burchill's book picked up by Stirling Publishing after contract cancelled

A Julie Burchill book that was dropped by Little, Brown after a series of tweets by the journalist has been picked up by Edinburgh-based indie Stirling Publishing.

Welcome To The Woke Trials: How #Identity Killed Progressive Politics had been due for release by the Constable imprint this spring. However, Little, Brown cancelled the contract last December after Burchill wrote tweets about Islam that were branded “deplorable” by m.d. Charlie King in a letter to staff.

Now Stirling has acquired world rights from the Hamilton Agency for the title, billed as “the book on cancel culture they tried to cancel”.

Explaining the acquisition, Stirling said it was “committed to free speech and unafraid to publish provocative but necessary voices”. The book is scheduled to be released in the summer.

Its synopsis explains: “In 2013, Julie Burchill wrote a mischievous piece in the Observer in defence of her friend Suzanne Moore. Burchill hadn't anticipated the vitriolic reaction that her words would provoke. She was pursued by the outrage mob, and there were even calls in the House of Commons for her to be sacked. Seven years later Burchill – 'the dark star of Fleet Street' – was back with a column in a national newspaper and a book deal with a major corporate publisher. But it wasn’t long before the outrage mob returned. Welcome to the Woke Trials is part memoir and part indictment of what happened to Burchill between then and now.”

Burchill has been a journalist for over four decades and is currently a columnist at the Sunday Telegraph and an essayist at the Spectator and UnHerd. She is the author of more than a dozen books.

Announcing its decision not to publish the book last year. Little, Brown said “While there is no legal definition of hate speech in the UK, we believe that Julie's comments on Islam are not defensible from a moral or intellectual standpoint, that they crossed a line with regard to race and religion, and that her book has now become inextricably linked with those views."

Burchill told The Bookseller at the time she did not regret her comments, saying: "The silly led by the sinister are waging a war on free speech – and cowards are standing by and letting it happen."