The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World

My book The New Puritans is now available in paperback. It can also be bought on Kindle or as an audiobook. It was one of the “Books of the Year” in the Times, the Spectator and the Times Literary Supplement.

Reviews

“A sober but devastating skewering of cancel culture and the moral certainties it shares with religious fundamentalism”
- Sunday Times

“Doyle writes exceptionally well and he backs up his j’accuse with copious illustrations of ideological excess… University no-platformers like to say that ‘words are violence’. If so, Doyle’s are rapiers”
- The Herald

“This book is a call to arms in an existential battle… it’s thrilling to be led by such a brilliant commander”
- The Spectator

“If TLS readers were asked to draft a job description for the perfect guide to the ideology of identity politics, how would it run? Perhaps like this: a scholar of English, taking degrees at several universities, culminating in an Oxford DPhil on Renaissance English literature; professionally versed in recent literary and philosophical schools; an outspoken campaigner for civil rights in the idioms of the 1960s and 1970s, celebrating a range of subsequent victories on those battlefields; a gay man with much insight into more recent debates on gender; writing with passionate commitment. Too much to ask? But here he is: Andrew Doyle’s The New Puritans: How the religion of social justice captured the western world (Constable) unpacks the contest for writers and readers of literature, philosophers, historians and activists. In the arts everything changes; this is the best map of where, for better or worse, we have arrived”
- Times Literary Supplement

“In this lucid, important book, the satirist and commentator Andrew Doyle zeroes in on the religiosity of these movements… He is supremely erudite and writes beautifully. Anyone with an interest in contemporary culture and politics should read this book”
– Matthew d’Ancona, Tortoise Media

“This is a serious book about a serious subject - the arrogation of moral purity and cultural orthodoxy by a small but influential posse, and Doyle's anger and disbelief come through on every page”
– Mail on Sunday

“The New Puritans is a passionate and erudite exposé of the modern-day social-justice movement. With clarity and precision, Doyle exposes its countless flaws and hypocrisies. His book is an essential guide for anyone looking to understand why the culture war has grown so hot”
– City Journal

“Doyle isn’t the first author to examine the methods and motivations of woke fanatics, and he won’t be the last. However, I doubt whether anyone will do so with more style or generosity of spirit”
– Conservative Woman

“The New Puritans is a fusillade of uncompromising reason but reason with compassion. Andrew Doyle has written a masterful broadside against the woke that will also discomfit the anti-woke, proposing to both the radical notion that rather than being identities, we embrace our status as individuals”
– The Critic

“This is a finely written, closely argued book on an alarming and all- pervasive social development. Doyle hopes that it will soon become obsolete – if it doesn’t, say farewell to liberal Britain”
– The Times

“Doyle’s study is sprinkled with humour and is analytical and timely. One doesn’t have to agree with it fully to recognise he speaks plenty of sense”
– Irish Examiner

“Doyle succeeds in doing what few writers have managed: he gives form to that nebulous movement known as woke… The New Puritans is a sucker punch of truth rendered in a seductively rhythmic prose”
– Country Squire Magazine  

“The first thing to be said about this book is that Andrew Doyle can write. He writes fluently, with examples, with an amusing sense of irony, and he writes convincingly… fine prose, razor sharp wit, and insight”
– The European Conservative  

“The New Puritans - thanks to Doyle’s academic background - is scholarly and rigorous. He knows a great deal more about the theory he’s criticising than most of his opponents”
– Law & Liberty