Supporters, I am delighted to finally be able to share with you the cover reveal for the book.
Because, let's face it, it's never a bad day at the moment to see a picture of Boris Johnson being shat on by a pigeon.
I'll be sharing this on Twitter shortly (to the surprise, I am sure, of none of you) but I was keen to post it here first. Not least because it allows me to share with you a few more insights as to what you've got coming in January, which the cover helps highlight. So let's break it down.
Overall approach and vibe
As I wrote about on here before, one of the reasons I wanted to take the time to get the book right was because I wanted it to be a book. I wanted it to feel - and read - not as a collection of Twitter threads (the medium for which these were originally written and the medium around which they were written). I wanted it to feel like you - the reader - had, in your hands, a complete narrative. Indeed I actually had several offers from publishers who wanted to take the Brexit Tapes and do something with it. The reason I chose Unbound was because they wanted the same thing - not a cut and paste job, but something which treated the threads as a starting point.
This cover (and the design inside, which I can share once Unbound's people have finished playing with it) are designed around a single goal: This book should feel like a book, it should read like a book and it does. All your favourite bits (if you are familiar with the threads) are there, but they're now joined together.
The result, and the vibe I'm going for is "Future Dad History." This is a book from the future about our time now, written for future people to buy their dad's at christmas. It just happened that your copies (and those that will appear in shops) happened to fall through a time vortex or something.
So in design terms I wanted a cover that represented that, but also made clear that this was also satire.
"From the Referendum to the Second Dark Age"
This gives a good idea of the full scope of the book now. It made sense to expand slightly and give full closure to our original characters by stretching the timeline of the book up to the point where Johnson booted all the Tory rebels out of the party, rather than going back earlier to the Theresa May's election. Given everything that has come since, I think this decision has been validated. This book is about the events that (in essence) led to Johnson. Whether I end up doing something on his decline will depend on whether I can stomach it, and indeed whether anyone actually wants it.
Our worse-for-wear statue of Johnson
One of the things I added early on in book form was future-context as to how Johnson made everything about himself. This included a (fake) quote to go at the front of the book (because every good 'Dad History' book starts with a quote):
"My name is Bozymandias, King of Kings;
"I got Brexit done."
- Unknown author. Inscription found on broken statue pedestal near Chatham, Arrondissement of Kent
To me, it summed up the whole May period by not even mentioning her - the efforts to actually achieve something sensible (if it was ever possible), utterly undone and undermined by those who had no desire for anything sensible at all. All, ultimately, sacrificed on the altar of those - Johnson in particular - who were quite happy to burn it all down for their perceived place in history. History that would, eventually, reveal them for who they are.
It was that idea, and the opening inscription, which the cover designer latched onto. And so it's that statue (avec pigeon) that graces the cover now.
Anyway, I hope you like the cover. I hope you're as excited to see the book in print at the end of the year as I am. I'll be posting a cover reveal on Twitter shortly. If you're on there and want to share it, please do! We may be past the "backing" stage but we're very much in the "pre-order" phase, and - let's be honest - I'd love as many people to discover (and hopefully enjoy) this book as possible, and if they can get extras by doing so before it hits the shops, everybody wins.
Once some internal layouts are ready for revealing I'll share them here too. At that point, we get to talk Brexit Tapes and their original inspiration:
The Nixon Tapes...
G