Two major books about new prime minister Liz Truss are currently under way, with the first due to be released at the end of this year.
Harry Cole, political editor at the Sun, and James Heale, the Spectator’s diary editor, are behind the first book, which is titled Out of the Blue, while the second is being written by businessman, pollster and writer Lord Ashcroft.
Cole and Heale’s book will be published by HarperCollins on 8 December. The blurb for the book says the pair have “unrivalled access and insight”, and will “chart the rise of the geeky teenage Lib Dem who transformed into the queen of the Brexiteers”.
The book promises to include insights from Truss’s “closest friends and supporters, as well as her worst critics and enemies, [to] paint the true picture of Britain’s third female prime minister”.
Cole has covered Westminster for more than 10 years and has won a number of awards for his reporting, including Scoop of the Year twice, most recently in 2021 for a story about then health secretary Matt Hancock’s affair with his aide. Cole, who is a former boyfriend of Boris Johnson’s wife Carrie Johnson, was one of the earliest employees at Guido Fawkes.
Former Conservative party donor Ashcroft’s book will not be released until the second half of 2023, he said. He has previously written unauthorised biographies about figures including Rishi Sunak, Carrie Johnson and David Cameron.
The unofficial biography of Cameron – titled Call Me Dave and co-written with journalist Isabel Oakeshott – included allegations, denied by Conservative party sources, that the former prime minister was involved in a bizarre university dining club ritual involving a dead pig’s head. The book also made a series of unsubstantiated allegations about Cameron’s association with drug-taking while at university.
Announcing the book on his website, Ashcroft said it would be “accurate, objective, open-minded, fair, factual and even-handed”.
Ashcroft’s book currently has no publisher, although a number of his previous books have been published by Biteback Publishing. These include First Lady, about Carrie Johnson, and Going for Broke, about the rise of Truss’s former leadership rival Rishi Sunak, as well as Call Me Dave.
Ashcroft said he wanted to analyse Truss’s first year in office, and hoped that his biography “might serve as a valuable guide to the electorate in the months leading up to the next general election, which must be held by 2024”.
The book will include polling data carried out by Ashcroft as well as the reflections of focus groups concerning voters’ appetite for a fifth successive Conservative term in government.
