Iain Dale

The Men from Miami is a real-life Cold War thriller about the Americans who fought for Fidel Castro in the Cuban revolution – then switched sides to try to bring him down. This larger-than-life assortment of adventurers and misfits wreaked havoc across the Caribbean as they fought for and against Castro, then went on to be implicated in President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, a failed invasion of ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier’s Haiti, and the downfall of President Nixon. Back in 1957, Fidel Castro was a hero to many in the United States for his battle against Cuba’s dictatorial regime. Two dozen American adventurers joined his rebel band in the mountains, including fervent idealists, a trio of teens from Guantánamo Bay naval base, a sleazy ex-con who liked underage girls, and at least two future murderers. The rebels’ eventual victory delighted the USA – but then Castro ran up the red flag and some started wondering if they’d supported the wrong side. Many of Castro’s now disillusioned American volunteers – most importantly Frank Fiorini, who would become infamous for his role in the Watergate burglary, and Alex Rorke, whose mysterious 1963 disappearance remains unsolved – changed sides and joined the Cuban exiles who had washed up in Miami. Their numbers swelled with the arrival of amateur mercenaries from across America ready to drink beer and fight communism. Meanwhile, CIA agents were training Cuban paramilitaries in the Everglades and working alongside the Mafia to assassinate Castro. The Cold War had arrived in Florida, and things would never be the same again.

Denis MacShane has seen and been on every part of the Labour Party over the last 50 years. He has fought, lost and won elections to the Commons, local government and the trade union movement. One unique insight he has comes from 15 years work with trade unions and progressive political movement in Europe and overseas. His book is personal, political and full of insights. Much of the European left is down and out and Labour must avoid that fate. I hope Labour Party members debate without rancour or sectarian anger what needs to be done. This book is a good starting point. Polly Toynbee, journalist Denis MacShane has had a colourful, often controversial life as a journalist-politician in Labour over many years, standing for Parliament in 1974 and being the best Europe Minister of any government until the calamity of Brexit struck. His account of why Labour is so good at losing elections is fascinating reading. What to do to get Labour back into power is a central question if we don't want to live in a one party state Steve Richards, journalist and presenter Since 1970, Labour has won power in just 4 of the 14 general elections. This angry, passionate book asks why Labour is so good at losing elections and so unhappy and edgy when it does win. Denis MacShane joined the Labour Party in 1970, and has held every office at local party level. He stood for the Commons aged 26. He served as an MP for 18 years and was Minister of State for Europe. He draws on experience, meetings with Labour leaders from Jim Callaghan to Jeremy Corbyn, and his personal diaries kept when in the Commons as he tries to answer the question: Why is Labour so keen on fighting internal battles and so useless at winning power? Denis MacShane's book is full of observations that are witty, personal, and exasperating. They offer insights and pragmatic guidance. Based on the hard lessons he's learned, MacShane offers twelve pragmatic suggestions for turning Labour into a party of power as well as protest.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind's political career has been as glittering as it has been long-lived. Indeed, as a minister for eighteen years, he has seen longer uninterrupted service than anyone since Lord Palmerston in the early nineteenth century. In both the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence, during some of the most turbulent years of the late twentieth century, he had a ringside seat at Margaret Thatcher's historic summit with President Gorbachev, was in charge of British troops during the Bosnian conflict, helped change Polish history during the Cold War, and held secret negotiations on the Falklands with the Argentinians. For his robustness against the Kremlin's aggression in Ukraine, he is currently banned from Russia by President Putin. Now, from the man himself, comes the inside story of all those affairs and more. From Rifkind's battles with Margaret Thatcher over Scotland to his five pivotal years as chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, overseeing GCHQ, working with MI6, meeting the CIA, Power and Pragmatism is the shrewd, humorous and frank memoir of a genuine political heavyweight.

'Very funny' Spectator Book of the Year 'Robust and entertaining' Sunday Times Book of the Year 'Betcha we don't leave.' I wrote that on the evening of 24 June 2016, once the euphoria had passed. A lot of us leavers, despite being elderly and thick, knew. The establishment wouldn't let it happen. Quite how the establishment stopped us from leaving the European Union, though, we could never have guessed. A mandate which became a process and resulted in the UK being the laughing stock of the world. We might have guessed at the relentless howls of outrage from that extreme block of transgressed remainers, the hostility of the House of Commons, the civil service and the BBC. That was a given, and it all played its part. But beyond our imagination was the readiness of politicians to ignore or subvert the vote, the sheer ineptitude of those charged with negotiating our withdrawal, the spite of the EU and the intercession of that usual thing, events. The Great Betrayal tells the story of a failed Brexit and a betrayal of the British people, drawn from interviews with those at the very centre of what became, in the end, a surreal charade.

After Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was filmed going in to the Saudi consulate in Turkey, he was never seen alive again. What happened next turned into a major international scandal, now finally pieced together by Channel 4's BAFTA award-winning Foreign Affairs Correspondent Jonathan Rugman. Described by Donald Trump as the 'worst cover-up ever', this is the first comprehensive account  of one of the most notorious and outrageous murder plots of our time. In The Killing in the Consulate, Rugman pieces together in minute-by-minute detail the events after Khashoggi entered the Saudi diplomatic building on 2 October 2018, expecting to receive the documentation that would enable him to marry Hatice Gengiz, patiently waiting for him outside. Little did they realise, he was entering a trap, as a 15-man Saudi hit squad had just flown in to the country and was waiting for him. Within minutes he had been viciously murdered and his body was quickly disposed of. The Saudis thought they would be able to get away with it all, and concocted a far-fetched story to cover it up. But what they didn't realise was that Turkey's President Erdogan's security and intelligence agencies had bugged the consulate, and captured the horrific events on tape. Based on confidential sources, dramatic new evidence and in-depth research across several countries, Rugman reveals the context behind the murder and attempted cover-up. He shows how a power struggle between Erdogan and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, had such fatal results. The prince had seemed to promise a new and more open era for his country, while also investing vast sums in arms deals with the West. Inevitably other nations, including President Trump and the USA, were drawn into the affair, which created the biggest crisis in US-Saudi relations since 9/11. Skilfully, Rugman draws together all the strands to tell a gripping story of one man's tragedy that had global consequences.

‘An inspirational call to arms’ DAILY MAIL ‘This book is so sensible, so substantially researched, so briskly written, so clear in its arguments, that one wishes Baroness Cavendish was still whispering into the prime ministerial ear’ THE TIMES ‘A thoughtful handbook to help societies age gracefully’ FINANCIAL TIMES ‘This bold, visionary book is a wake-up call to governments. It is a wake-up call to us all’ SUNDAY TIMES From award-winning journalist, Camilla Cavendish, comes a profound analysis of one of the biggest challenges facing the human population today. The world is undergoing a dramatic demographic shift. By 2020, for the first time in history, the number of people aged 65 and over will outnumber children aged five and under. But our systems are lagging woefully behind this new reality. In Extra Time, Camilla Cavendish embarks on a journey to understand how different countries are responding to these unprecedented challenges. Travelling across the world in a carefully researched and deeply human investigation, Cavendish contests many of the taboos around ageing. Interviewing leading scientists about breakthroughs that could soon transform the quality and extent of life, she sparks a debate about how governments, businesses, doctors, the media and each one of us should handle the second half of life. She argues that if we take a more positive approach, we should be able to reap the benefits of a prolonged life. But that will mean changing our attitudes and using technology, community, even anti-ageing pills, to bring about a revolution.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER Gordon Brown has been a guiding force for Britain and the world over three decades. This is his candid, poignant and deeply relevant story. In describing his upbringing in Scotland as the son of a minister, the near loss of his eyesight as a student and the death of his daughter within days of her birth, he shares the passionately held principles that have shaped and driven him, reminding us that politics can and should be a calling to serve. He explains how as Chancellor he equipped Britain for a globalised economy while swimming against the neoliberal tide and shows what more must be done to halt rising inequality. In his behind-the-scenes account of the financial crisis and his leading role in saving the world economy from collapse, he addresses the question of who was to blame for the crash and why its causes and consequences still beset us. From the invasion of Iraq to the tragedy of Afghanistan, from the coalition negotiations of 2010 to the referendums on Scottish independence and Europe, Gordon Brown draws on his unique experiences to explain Britain’s current fractured condition. And by showing us what progressive politics has achieved in recent decades, he inspires us with a vision of what it might yet achieve today.

It's thirty seconds to air. The interviewee has walked off in a huff. The next guest hasn't arrived. There's a wall of riot police behind me. The cameraman only speaks Hungarian and has cut my head out of the shot, but I don't know his word for "wide angle." Then comes the quiet. Utter silence in my head. We've just lost comms with the whole team back in London. I can choose to scream. Or to surrender to the moment. Then, a hand is waved at me as a visual cue. And I start talking. The things that are said on camera are only part of the story. Behind every interview there's more. How the story came about. How it ended. The compromises that were made. The regrets, the rows, the deeply inappropriate comedy. Making news is an essential but imperfect art. It rarely goes according to plan. Emily Maitlis never expected to find herself wandering around the Maharani of Jaipur's bedroom with Bill Clinton or get invited to the Miss USA beauty pageant by its owner, Donald Trump. She never expected to be thrown into a provincial Cuban jail, to drink red wine at Steve Bannon's kitchen table, or spend three hours in a lift with Alan Partridge. She certainly didn't expect the Dalai Lama to tell her the story of his most memorable poo. The beauty of television is its ability to simplify, but that's also its weakness: it can distill everything down to one snapshot, one soundbite. Then the news cycle moves on. Airhead is Maitlis' step back from the white noise. Before and after the camera started rolling, this is what really happened.

Jennie Lee was the brave, passionate, and beautiful miner's daughter from Scotland who became a socialist MP at the age of 24, before she was old enough to vote. In spite of her youth, she was one of the finest political orators of her day, as much at home in Scottish working-men's clubs as in the chamber at Westminster. She married Aneurin Bevan on the rebound from a tragic love affair; and became his loyal comrade through the lonely war years, the trials of founding the NHS, and the bitter internal feuds of the 1950s. Her mission was to make Nye the leader of the Labour party; she was the `dark angel', `Nye's Lady Macbeth', both loved and loathed by fellow MPs. She broke down after Nye's early death in 1960 but was rescued by Harold Wilson who made her the first Minister for the Arts. With his support she founded the Open University. Jennie Lee is the biography of a stormy political dissenter; the study of a pioneering woman MP whose socialism undermined her feminism; the moving and intimate story of an outstanding political marriage; the chronicle of the first, and most successful, Minister for the Arts. What emerges is a compelling portrait of a remarkable woman: widely admired, loved more often than she was liked, and impossible to ignore.

NOW A NATIONAL BESTSELLER! Wall Street Journal Bestseller USA Today Bestseller Publisher’s Weekly Bestseller Conservative Book Club Bestseller “One of the best reads of 2018." — Sean Hannity "The book is well worth your time." — Megyn Kelly "A story told with both heart and knowledge. Really good, go get it!" — President Donald J. Trump No job is more of a pressure cooker than being a White House press secretary…especially in this White House. For more than two decades, Sean Spicer had been a respected political insider, working as a campaign and communications strategist. But in December 2016, he got the call of a lifetime. President-elect Donald J. Trump had chosen him to be the White House press secretary. And life hasn’t been the same since. When he accepted the job, Spicer was far from a household name. But then he walked into the bright lights of the briefing room, and the cameras started rolling. His every word was scrutinized. Every movement was parodied. Every detail became a meme. And that’s just the public side. Behind the scenes, things were almost as difficult in an administration plagued by leaks that frustrated and angered both Spicer and the president. Not to mention the extraordinary pressures on Spicer’s family and his faith. Now, in his provocative and enlightening political memoir, The Briefing, Spicer reveals the truth behind some of the biggest news stories of our time, and he offers a glimpse into what it’s like to stand at the press secretary’s podium—and how he got there. The Briefing is the first insider account written by someone who worked on the Trump campaign, with the Trump transition team, and in the Trump White House—and has seen Donald Trump rallying voters, building an administration, and making crucial policy decisions. Spicer’s riveting and personal account makes The Briefing the must-read political memoir of the year.