I'm Philip Holden and this is Ideas in Writing - the podcast where we talk to people about words and books and the shift, sly use of words in untruths and the books that shine a light on shadowy falsehood. The guests bring along a word and so do I...it's all downhill from there on...

The guest this time is the journalist Peter Oborn whose book The Assault on Truth – Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism was published this year traces the origins of lying and catalogues the lies of the current Prime Minister. Particularly topical as it drops because of…well…pretty much everything emanating from 10 Downing Street.

Peter brought along the work integrity for obvious reasons, whilst I brought the word power.

We talked about how Peter got into journalism (after a couple of false starts) and how conservatism has changed – for the worse. As well as what we can do to resist the rise of the liars.

Apologies that the sound set up isn’t the best in this episode. I’ll do my best to improve things for next time.

Ideas in Writing is produced with the support of Mr Books Bookshop in Tonbridge - the home of inspiring, imaginative and intelligent books, gifts and conversation. They're on Twitter too @mrbooks_ton. But most importantly of all, eventually you will be able visit them (in the lovely market town of Tonbridge in Kent) for a browse any Wednesday to Saturday 10am to 5pm...from April 21st...hooray!

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CREDITS & links

Peter’s book The Assault on Truth – Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism is available to order just by clicking on the link here or you can go to www.MrBooks.co.uk to order any book you like, or have them search for it!

Peter also mentioned Edmund Burke. Emily Jones’ award winning book is Edmund burke and the Invention of Modern Conservatism and you can order it here whilst Jesse Norman’s book on Burke is available here.

It’s surprisingly difficult to find writings by Michael Oakshott. His essay Rationalism in Politics and others is currently being considered for reprinting so keep an eye out here.

The phrase ‘Gonzo journalism’ crops up in Fear and Loathing in las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson so you can get a flavour of that here and JP Kenyon’s book on the Popish Plot can be found here.

All the books you order through these links help support Mr Books and this podcast and, if you can't find exactly what you're looking for, just visit the Mr Books webiste at www.mrbooks.co.uk and we'll do our best to track it down for you.

Ideas in Writing is recorded and produced by Philip Holden using Zencastr and Acast.com

The Ideas in Writing theme "Farting Around" is by Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The "Light Easy March" sting is by ...dog http://www.besonic.com/dog

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