At a time that feels unprecedented in British politics - with unlawful prorogations of parliament, casual race-baiting by senior politicians, and a climate crisis that continues to be ignored - it's easy to think these are uncharted waters for us, as a democracy. But Britain has seen political crises and far-right extremism before, just as it has witnessed regressive, heavy-handed governments. Much worse has been done, or allowed to be done, in the name of the people and eventually, those same people have called it out, stood up, and resisted. In this new collection of fictions and essays spanning two millennia of British protest, authors, historians, and activists re-imagine twenty acts of defiance: campaigns to change unjust laws, protests against unlawful acts, uprisings successful and unsuccessful - from Boudica to Blair Peach, from the Battle of Cable Street to the tragedy of Grenfell Tower. Britain might not be famous for its revolutionary spirit, but its people know when to draw the line, and say very clearly, '¡No pasarán!'
About the Author: Julia Bell is a writer and Director of the Creative Writing MA at Birkbeck, University of London. She has published three novels, most recently The Dark Light (Macmillan, 2015). Her essays and short fiction have appeared in The White Review, Times Literary Supplement, Paris Review, Mal Journal, the BBC, and numerous anthologies. She is the co-editor of the newly re-issued Creative Writing Coursebook (Macmillan, 2019). She divides her time between London and Berlin. Bidisha is a writer, TV and radio broadcaster and film-maker. She specialises in human rights, social justice, gender and the arts and offers political analysis and cultural diplomacy tying these interests together. Her most recent book is Asylum and Exile: Hidden Voices, based on her outreach work with asylum seekers and refugees. Her most recent film is An Impossible Poison which has been highly critically acclaimed and selected for multiple film festivals internationally. SJ Bradley is an author and short story writer from Leeds, UK. She is a K. Blundell Trust Award winner, and a Saboteur Award winner for her work on Remembering Oluwale. She is director of the Northern Short Story Festival and Fiction Editor at Strix magazine. Her second novel, Guest, is now available from Dead Ink Books. Jude Brown has had short stories published in several anthologies and her work has been shortlisted for the Bridport and Raymond Carver Short Story Prizes. She is a winner of a Northern Writers' Award and her debut novel His Dark Sun, supported by a grant from Arts Council England, was selected for this year's New Writing North's Read Regional campaign. Originally from Middlesbrough, she has lived in London, Liverpool, Reading and Sydney. She now lives in Sheffield and has an MA in Creative Writing from Sheffield Hallam University. Lucy Caldwell was born in Belfast in 1981. She is the multi-award-winning author of three novels, several stage plays and radio dramas, and two collections of short stories (Multitudes, 2016, and Intimacies, forthcoming in May 2020). She is also the editor of the anthology Being Various: New Irish Short Stories (Faber, 2019). Her story 'The Children' was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2019. Steve Chambers is an experienced writer and dramatist. His political thriller, GLADIO: We can Neither Confirm nor Deny (Zymurgy), won a Newcastle Journal Culture Award. His feature film, Hold Back the Night (Parallax Pictures), won the Prix du Public Forum at Cannes while his adaptation of Graham Swift's Waterland for BBC R4 won the WGGB Best Radio Dramatisation. Currently, he is writing a novel, The Dark Months, and developing ideas for radio and stage. Martin Edwards's latest novel, Gallows Court, has been nominated for both the 2019 eDunnit award for best crime novel and the CWA Historical Dagger. He was recently honoured with the CWA Dagger in the Library for his body of work and has received the Edgar, Agatha, H.R.F. Keating and Poirot awards, two Macavity awards, and the CWA Short Story Dagger. He is consultant to the British Library's Crime Classics and President of the Detection Club. Uschi Gatward's stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Best British Short Stories 2015 (Salt), The Mirror in the Mirror (Comma), as a Galley Beggar Press Single, and in the magazines The Barcelona Review, Brittle Star, gorse, The Lonely Crowd, Short Fiction, Southword, Structo and Wasafiri. She was shortlisted for The White Review Short Story Prize 2016. Luan Goldie was born in Glasgow but has lived in East London for most of her life. She is a primary school teacher, and formerly a business journalist. She is the winner of the Costa Short Story Award 2017 for her story 'Two Steak Bakes and Two Chelsea Buns'. Her short stories have also been long and shortlisted by Spread the Word and the Grazia/Women's Prize First Chapter competition. Her debut novel Nightingale Point was released in July 2019 by HarperCollin