On 21 November, the political journalist Tim Shipman concluded his quartet of Brexit doorstoppers. The books in his Out series (all framed around that word: All Out War, Fall Out, No Way Out and now, simply, Out) have uncovered the gritty details and factional warfare of May and Johnson years. And they have proved unlikely blockbusters, consistently topping the Sunday Times bestseller list.
Each book is packed with parliamentary procedure, chronicling the low-level machinations of earnest 25-year-old staffers, desperate to prove themselves to their bosses through increasingly fraught briefings and backstabbing. It’s a type of thrill usually reserved for political anoraks. But somehow, despite their weight and subject matter, the books managed to capture the attention of the rest of the country, too. The series has dominated Waterstones shopfronts and avoided the political tome’s usual fate: a brief flurry of interest around publication, normally promoted through broadsheet serialisation, before a rapid relegation to the bargain bin.
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