Quercus and Coad unite to expose inequality in Kensington

Quercus has secured One Kensington, an exposé of the inequality in Britain’s wealthiest borough, by Emma Dent Coad.  

Commissioning editor Ben Brock acquired UK and Commonwealth rights from Charlotte Merritt at Andrew Nurnberg Associates. One Kensington will be published on 4th August 2022.  

Coad is a political activist and former Labour MP who joined Kensington & Chelsea Council as a Labour councillor in 2006. Her first election as MP for Kensington in 2017 was followed by the Grenfell Tower fire four days later.  

One Kensington seeks to lay bare the “appalling degree of mismanagement and neglect that has made Kensington & Chelsea a grim symbol of an ever more divided country”, Quercus said. It is one of the first books to tell the full story of the Grenfell Tower disaster.  

Brock commented: “Emma Dent Coad has been a crucial voice in the campaign against poverty and inequality for many years, and it is a privilege to be able to work with her on a book that exposes in detail how many people go hungry in the shadow of the most expensive luxury flats in the world — and what, in the shadow of the Grenfell Tower disaster and the revelations of corruption and incompetence that followed, can be done about it. This book is shocking, damning — and necessary.”  

Coad said: “I was born and bred in the borough that I love and, like so many from all backgrounds, continue to be devastated by the event and the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire, which revealed serious weaknesses in the administration and turned a tragedy into an atrocity. One Kensington looks behind the scenes at years of political machinations and decision-making in ‘the most unequal borough in Britain’ and exposes the breathtaking council estate development programme which preceded the worst peacetime disaster of our time – the Grenfell Tower fire.”