The Bodley Head nets account of UK's 'bonfire of liberties' by human rights lawyer Wagner

The Bodley Head has acquired Emergency State by leading human rights Barrister Adam Wagner “about the freedoms we lost in the pandemic and how to get them back”, in a three-way auction. 

Stuart Williams, publishing director, acquired rights at auction from Antony Topping of Greene & Heaton for publication in October 2022.

Beginning on 26th March 2020, when a new 11-page law locked down tens of millions of people and “confined us to our homes, banned socialising, closed shops, gyms, pubs, places of worship... restricting our freedoms more than any other law in history, justified by the rapid spread of a deadly new virus,” Emergency State explores the ramifications of this unprecedented legislation. 

This book, the publisher says, will tell the “startling story of the state of emergency which became an emergency state, how extreme measures caused constitutional chaos, and why it is only by understanding these unprecedented events that we can learn lessons for the future.”

Adam Wagner is billed as one of the UK’s leading human rights barristers and the country’s pre-eminent expert on Covid-19 laws, described in the House of Lords as “the only person in the country who can make sense” of the laws.  

He acted in many of the key legal cases of the pandemic and will tell his personal story of some of those cases in Emergency State. 

“The last two years of the Covid-19 pandemic were legally unprecedented, at times horrifying as over 170,000 lost their lives, and so fast-moving it was almost impossible to keep track of the wider story of constitutional chaos,” he said. 

“Emergency State will tell that story through the laws which locked us down, the freedoms we lost and my own personal experience of fighting for people’s rights during a deadly pandemic.” 

Williams described the book as the story of “how a bonfire of liberties happened during a time that many of us would prefer to forget,” adding: “This is an important, timely, personal book, both a record of a turbulent period and a warning from the most trusted voice on the subject in the country as to why we must guard our freedoms.” 

Wagner was the specialist advisor to the Joint Committee on Human Rights’ year-long inquiry into the human rights implications of Covid-19 and is currently a visiting professor of law at Goldsmiths University.