‘I pause on June 2nd at 11am to eat my breakfast in the sitting room where it is – blessedly – served by Rupert on another gorgeous morning, a flawless blue sky not a cloud to be seen.’

 

We are delighted to be publishing Alan Bennett’s Enough Said, his fourth collection of diaries and prose, in partnership with Faber.

Taking up where Keeping On Keeping On left off, Enough Said is Alan Bennett’s fourth collection of diaries and prose.

Covering the turbulent years 2016 to 2024, the diaries take us through lockdown, Brexit, the reign of Johnson, the rise of Trump and the death of the Queen. In between, Alan holidays in Paris and Venice, returns to favourite haunts in England, and visits churches, antique shops and the National Gallery. There is the premiere of Allelujah!, the revived Talking Heads, the publication of two Sunday Times bestsellers and the filming of The Choral.

2024 is the year that Alan turns ninety; he reflects on old age and the importance of luck. He looks back to childhood and recalls an idyllic wartime month as an evacuee. There is an extended piece about HMQ, and on uncovering an extraordinary albums of publisher Roger Senhouse, the last lover of Lytton Strachey, acquired for £10 in the 70s.

A book for the bedside, this is poignant, funny, contemplative Alan Bennett, as he records life both personal and political in his most distinct of voices.

Pre-order Enough Said

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Presided over by the lofty Mrs McBryde, Hill Topp House is a superior council home for the elderly.

Among the unforgettable cast of staff and residents there’s Mr Peckover the deluded archaeologist, Phyllis the knitter, Mr Cresswell the ex-cruise ship hairdresser, the enterprising Mrs Foss and Mr Jimson the chiropodist. Covid is the cause of fatalities and the source of darkly comic confusion, but it’s also the key to liberation.

As staff are hospitalised, protocol breaks down. Miss Rathbone reveals a lifelong secret, and the surviving residents seize their moment, arthritis allowing, to scamper freely in the warmth of the summer sun.

A wonderful surprise gift from Alan Bennett and the perfect way to kill time before his brilliant new collection next year, Killing Time is out in paperback next Thursday.

Pre-order Killing Time in paperback

Alan Bennett’s works for stage and screen include Talking Heads, Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, A Question of Attribution, The Madness of George III, an adaptation of The Wind in the Willows, The History Boys, The Habit of Art, People, Hymn, Cocktail Sticks, Two Besides and Allelujah!

Prose collections are Writing Home, Untold Stories (PEN/Ackerley Prize, 2006) and Keeping On Keeping On. Other work includes The Uncommon Reader, Smut: Two Unseemly Stories and recent Sunday Times bestsellers, House Arrest and Killing Time.

 

The Profile Books and Alexander Aitken Ideas Prize is pleased to announce its shortlist for the best debut trade non-fiction proposal from an academic. The Ideas Prize was first launched in 2019, and offers a £25,000 book contract with Profile Books, as well as representation with Aitken Alexander Associates, to the winning book proposal.

The shortlisted authors will be receiving guidance from an agent at Aitken Alexander on the next steps of their proposals, after which the winner will be determined via a judging panel. Many congratulations to our shortlisted authors for their wonderful projects, which are as follows:

Nicholas Radburn for Firearm Frontier
Lancaster University

Firearm Frontier explores the interconnection between the firearm and slave trades in world history. Following the British arms and ammunition trade across the globe, from warriors in the tropical forests of West Africa and Native Americans in the frozen tundra of Canada, to Maori warriors storming hill forts in precolonial New Zealand and East African marksmen stalking the savannah, Radburn will explore the devastating effects of the arrivals of these weapons. Firearm Frontier offer new perspectives on an age of slavery more violent and deadly than anything the world had ever seen, charting how gunpowder technology remade environments, cultures, politics, and societies.

Megan Gooch for Crash
University of Oxford

When a new coin type is created it is called a recoinage. We’ve had one recently with the coins of King Charles III entering circulation and replacing those of Queen Elizabeth II. Not all recoinages are a sign of an economic crisis, such as the accession of a new monarch, but historically, all financial crises created a recoinage. Crash is an adventure through numismatics – the study of coins – bringing together the disastrous histories of medieval kings, Tudor queens, civil wars, Viking invaders, and the coin that broke the French economy and led to the creation of the Franc, among many others.

Alexis Wick for Before 1498
Koç University

Drawing on years of study and research, Alexis Wick brings to life the story and legacy of Ahmad Ibn Majid, known to his peers as the ‘Lion of the Seas’, legendary master navigator of the Indian Ocean, on the eve of the arrival of the first Portuguese ships – and following them, European colonialism. In this evocative, fascinating maritime adventure, Before 1498 uncovers the untold story of Ibn Majid’s life and work, shedding precious light on long-neglected non-European traditions of learning and practices of navigation.

Congratulations to those who have been shortlisted, and many thanks to all who entered. The submissions window will open for the 2026 prize later this year when we announce the winner of the 2025 edition.

Donald Trump has repeatedly imposed, or threatened to impose, a tariff, or tax, on imports since he began his second term of office in January 2025. The book “The Economic Consequences of Mr Trump” argues that the President’s policy approach is a terrible mistake. The trade deficit is not a crisis for the US; tariffs fall mostly on domestic producers and consumers, rather than on foreign countries; tariffs will not bring back lost manufacturing jobs; and the struggles facing many people who voted for Mr Trump are nothing to do with trade.

These graphs show some of the evidence. Let us start with the impact of tariffs. Around 45% of the goods that the US imports are components or raw materials that US producers need to make finished goods. A tariff is thus a tax on US producers. (The graph comes from the San Francisco Federal Reserve.)

President Trump has argued that tariffs will bring manufacturing jobs back to the US. But manufacturing employment in the western world has been declining for decades. This graph from the OECD shows the decline in the proportion of manufacturing jobs in the last three decades of the 20th century. Jobs were declining in countries with trade surpluses (like Germany and Japan) as well as in the US. And all this happened well before China joined the World Trade Organisation in 2001. Technology, not trade, was the main factor.

Nor is the stagnation in US real wages the result of China joining the World Trade Organisation or the US taking part in a free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, which took effect in 1995. This graph, from the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, shows the big decline occurred before 1995. They then perked up after 2015.

All countries face the challenge of globalisation and trade competition with China. But the US is a lot less equal than other countries. The bars in the first chart show the extent of income inequality; the black diamonds in the second chart show the inequality in wealth. The top 10% of Americans own almost 80% of the wealth. That is the result of domestic US policies, not the fault of China or Mexico. The graph is from the OECD.

Another part of the Trump administration’s agenda is to cut taxes for the better off while cutting spending on benefits for the poor, like health (Medicaid) and food (SNAP). The administration argues that these tax cuts pay for themselves because economic growth accelerates, pushing up tax revenues. But history does not bear this out. Tax revenues fell, as a percentage of GDP, after the Bush tax cuts of the early 2000s and the Trump cuts in 2017. The decline occurred before the pandemic of 2020.

And the budget deficit grew on both occasions. Both graphs from the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis.

Find out more about what the trade war means for the world in The Economic Consequences of Mr Trump.

 

The judges of the Profile Books and Alexander Aitken Ideas Prize are pleased to announce the longlist for the 2025 Ideas Prize. Now in its fifth iteration, The Ideas Prize is an award for the best debut trade non-fiction proposal from an academic. Izzy Everington, Editorial Director at Profile Books, commented: ‘Thank you to everybody who sent in their submissions. It has been extremely gratifying to see so many fantastic ideas presented from a vast realm of disciplines, from cultural history to politics, numismatics to  philosophy. Many congratulations to all of our longlisted authors!’

The 11 longlisted authors and their submissions are as follows:

Marcia Allinson for The Green Network: Finding Life Among the Ruins of the Iron Curtain
University of Leeds

Megan Gooch for Crash: A Disastrous History of Britain Through its Money
University of Oxford

Alexis Wick for Before 1498: The Remarkable Forgotten Story of Ahmad Ibn Majid and the Indian Ocean
Koç University

Alexandra Cox & Stuart Sweeney for The Branded Mayflower: How Convict Transportation Shaped the Founding of America
University of Reading

Charlotte Mathieson for Sunscreen: A Sensory History.
University of Surrey

Hui-Ying Kerr for Kawaii: Cute Rebellion, Disruption and Transnational Girling
Nottingham Trent University

Nicholas Radburn for Firearm Frontier: Enslavement, Environmental Change, and the Making of the Global Arms Trade, 1650–1850
Lancaster University

Jasbeer Musthafa Mamalipurath for The Short History of Ignorance
Queen’s University Belfast

Michael Hannon for The Politics of Truth: From Plato to Post-Truth.
University of Nottingham

Sviatlana Kroitar for The Algorithmic Archipelago: How Digitalisation is Reshaping the Division of Labour
University of Leicester

Eva Miller for Origins: The Search for Where We Come From
University College London

Congratulations to those who have been longlisted, and many thanks to all who entered. The shortlist will be announced in the coming weeks.

The Ideas Prize was first launched in 2019, and offers a £25,000 book contract with Profile Books, as well as representation with Aitken Alexander Associates, to the winning book proposal.