Bodley Head to publish Cooke's 'lucid and brilliant' non-fiction

The Bodley Head is publishing a new, "important" non-fiction book by journalist Rachel Cooke, called The Reckoning.

Due for delivery in 2020, the Vintage imprint promises Cooke's latest outing will be "a lucid and brilliant journey through the complex terrain of sex and seduction, desire and morality, culture and art".

Among other urgent questions, the publisher said it will examine which books we are allowed to celebrate, which paintings we can look at on the walls of our galleries, how the gap between private morality and public standing works, and how we account for human frailty.

"The Reckoning will be an important book: a necessary intervention in the debate about what’s allowed and what’s not allowed in our culture, and the growing censoriousness surrounding those questions," commented publishing director Stuart Williams, having acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Peter Straus at RCW.

"There will also be a powerful personal strand that examines why Rachel Cooke has skin in this fight," he added.

Cooke, who writes for the Observer and New Statesman, is also the author of Her Brilliant Career: Ten Extraordinary Women of the Fifties, published by Virago in 2013.