This remarkable and monumental book at last provides a comprehensive answer to the age-old riddle of whether there are only a small number of 'basic stories' in the world. Using a wealth of examples, from ancient myths and folk tales via the plays and novels of great literature to the popular movies and TV soap operas of today, it shows that there are seven archetypal themes which recur throughout every kind of storytelling. But this is only the prelude to an investigation into how and why we are 'programmed' to imagine stories in these ways, and how they relate to the inmost patterns of human psychology. Drawing on a vast array of examples, from Proust to detective stories, from the Marquis de Sade to E.T., Christopher Booker then leads us through the extraordinary changes in the nature of storytelling over the past 200 years, and why so many stories have 'lost the plot' by losing touch with their underlying archetypal purpose. Booker analyses why evolution has given us the need to tell stories and illustrates how storytelling has provided a uniquely revealing mirror to mankind's psychological development over the past 5000 years. This seminal book opens up in an entirely new way our understanding of the real purpose storytelling plays in our lives, and will be a talking point for years to come.

Since its publication in 2003, The Great Deception has taken on the role of the Eurosceptics' bible, with the third edition helping to fuel the debate during the 2016 EU Referendum. This fourth edition celebrates the moment when the UK broke away from the European Union, having been extensively re-edited to incorporate newly available archive material, and updated to include the tumultuous events of recent years. The Great Deception, therefore, tells for the first time the inside story of the most audacious political project of modern times, from its intellectual beginnings in the 1920s, when the blueprint for the European Union was first conceived by a British civil servant, right up to the point when the UK resumes its path at as an independent sovereign nation after 47 years of membership of the European project in its various guises. Drawing on a wealth of new evidence and existing sources, scarcely an episode of the story does not emerge in startling new light, from the real reasons why de Gaulle kept Britain out in the 1960s to the fall of Mrs Thatcher and the build-up to the referendum campaign which had its roots in the Maastricht Treaty. The book chillingly shows how Britain’s politicians were consistently outplayed in a game the rules of which they never understood. It ends by evaluating the post referendum negotiations and asking whether this is the end of an episode or just a new beginning.

'It is becoming more and more obvious that it is not starvation, it is not microbes, it is not cancer but man himself who is his greatest danger: because he has no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating in their effect than the greatest natural catastrophes'.

This quote from the psychologist C. G. Jung sets the tone for this most important book. Politics has always been coloured by groupthink. Each political party of faction or grouping naturally has its own idea of how it sees the world more clearly than its rivals. Political decisions have ended badly because a little group of powerful men have collectively become so fixated on a single narrow view of what they hoped to achieve that they shut their minds to anything that contradicts it.

Take for example the recklessly obsessive way in which George W. Bush and Tony Blair launched their invasion of Iraq in 2003. The rise of Islamic movements recently such as Al Qaeda or IS. This has shown us the power of groupthink at its ultimate extreme. So contagious was the power of that particular form of groupthink that thousands more would-be jihadists flocked to join the cause so intoxicated by the thought of randomly killing 'infidels' that they were happy to commit suicide in pursuit of their fantasy cause.

Global Warming, Political Correctness (the new age of thought-crime) racism, sexism, positive discrimination, hostility to religion and the United States of Europe are all issues investigated. Mr Booker drills down to look at recent examples of groupthink: Charlie Hebdo, the collective emotion on the death of Princess Diana. Here, he argues, emotion is detached from its proper object to become a thing in itself.

It is only by obtaining some sort of insight into the psychology of crowds that it can be understood how powerless they are to hold any opinions other than those that are imposed upon them.m.