Home Interviews Publishing Editing

Book Publishing

This section profiles some of the books I have published in recent years.

In 2021 we celebrated fourteen years of writing by publishing an anthology of our collected work from 2007 - 2021.

In a groundbreaking book out in early 2019 we explored the potential and crisis of the insurgency in Catalonia in 'Building a New Catalonia: Self-Determination and Emancipation', from Bella Caledonia and Pol-Len Edicions.

This book brings together leading voices in the Catalonian left independence movement alongside key figures in the international solidarity movement. The book articulates the political strategies and aspirations of the anti-capitalist, feminist and socialist struggles for self-determination in Catalonia in a series of 35 short and sharply written essays.

The book includes a preface by Anna Gabriel, who was the Parliamentary leader of the municipal socialist CUP party at the time of the referendum and is now in exile in Geneva, under threat of arrest and imprisonment by the Spain. It includes chapters by Catalan political leaders including Jordi Cuixart (currently in jail awaiting trial for sedition), Liz Castro and David Fernandez, and prominent international contributors including journalist Paul Mason and economist Costas Lapavitsas. Ignasi Bernat and David Whyte set the scene for the book in an extended introduction that traces the enduring influence of the ’78 transition from Franco, and use this analysis to discuss the possibilities for developing truly democratic and popular forms of self-determination.



Bella Caledonia •

The Summer of Hate

WE can make two observations at the same time, first that Scotland is not immune to racism and bigotry, and second that this is a particularly English phenomenon of ethnonationalism we’re witnessing erupt into violence. In fact, an inability to give voice to English identity is paradoxically, one of the drivers of this crisis. As many commentators have noted England is frequently subsumed within ‘Britain’ and ‘Britishness’. To talk about and analyse English politics and culture is not to describ...
Bella Caledonia •

Off the Map

This week, news broke that sometime in the next four years, the planet is going to breach the 1.5 C rise in global temperature that we have long been told is the tipping point to avoid. The breaching of the 1.5C threshold, which scientists have warned could have dire consequences, should be only temporary, according to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), but it takes us into new territory. We are off the map.

In general, the response has been disinterest. It’s not that nobody cares, bu
Bella Caledonia •

May Daze of a Holy Nation

Conservative losses at the local elections across England seem to be damaging if not terminal. Their attempt at voter suppression seems to have failed and big gains for Labour, the Greens and the Lib Dems have been made. But as we know from the last thirty years, if the political task is reduced to ‘Getting rid of the Tories’ it risks letting in a least-worse option. Ed Davey and Keir Starmer offer a pale imitation of the Conservatives. The bar is so low they have positioned themselves too be in