Sphere to publish third Very British Problems book

Sphere is publishing a third Very British Problems book with "awkward journalist" Rob Temple: Very British Problems The Third.

Hannah Boursnell, editorial director at Sphere, struck the deal for world rights with Juliet Mushens at Caskie Mushens.

The book will bring readers more awkward situations for British people, such as "Starting to panic when a conversation doesn't end despite saying 'anyway' and 'right' at least 10 times". It will publish in hardback in October this autumn.

Temple, whose twitter feed @SoVeryBritish has over 1.7m followers, has had two books published with Sphere in the series - the sequel to the 2013 original published in 2015 - accompanied by two series of "Very British Problems" on Channel 4, a weekly Telegraph column, a T-shirt range, a board-game, and a range of greetings cards.

The first book passed the 100,000-copy mark in 2016, according to Sphere calling Temple "an absolute star of the Sphere non-fiction list". According to Nielsen BookScan, it sold around 89,000 copies across all print editions in the UK. The follow-up, Very British Problems Abroad, has sold 5,468 print copies in the UK since September 2015.

Boursnell said: "Rob Temple is an absolute star of the Sphere non-fiction list and I am so incredibly proud that last year we passed the 100,000-copy milestone with his books. I'm delighted to be working with Rob and Juliet on a third Very British Problems book, which promises to deliver more of Rob’s trademark wit and affectionately expose even more of our peculiarly British quirks."