CW: discusses allegations of sexual assault
Comedian Russell Brand’s recent allegations of rape and sexual assault, exposed by a joint investigation with Channel 4, The Times, and The Sunday Times, have not escaped the publishing industry. Bluebird, a division of industry giant Pan Macmillan, has announced the suspension of all future publications of Brand’s books in light of these ‘very serious allegations’. In 2020, The Times reported that one of the four women featured in Channel 4’s Dispatches broadcast on Saturday, had contacted Angharad Wood, Brand’s literary agent and co-founder of talent agency, Tavistock Wood, to express concerns about “the type of person they were representing.” Wood received an ‘aggressive’ response from Brand’s lawyer who denied the allegations. After the events of the past week, Tavistock Wood has stated how they were “horribly misled by him” and have since “terminated all professional ties to Brand.”
Nevertheless, Brand has left a stubborn mark on the literary world, with his best-selling memoir My Booky Wook, which earned him the 2008 British Book Award for Biography of the Year, despite its criticism from Private Eye as ‘dismal and masturbatory.’ He continued to write seven more books, all marked by his candid storytelling, portraying a man supposedly reformed from a life of sin. Yet, he often writes of his past mistreatment of women with a sense of nostalgia. For example, in My Booky Wook 2, he asks ‘What kind of man was I? Treating women in this way? If this is what I’m telling you, can you imagine what’s being left out?’.
Furthermore, Brand’s removal from Jeremy Corbyn’s upcoming poetry anthology serves as a testament to the extent of his influence as a seemingly erudite figure. He is an individual who not only could express deeply disturbing sentiments in writing but also managed to evade culpability, sidestep traditional media outlets, and even legal accountability. This allowed him to establish himself as a figure who existed outside the boundaries of societal norms, effectively undermining those who might challenge him in the future. For instance, in his 2014 book, Revolution, Brand, as written in The Atlantic, ‘perfunctorily dismissed as cogs in a machine’ women who accused Julian Assange, the Australian founder of WikiLeaks, of sexual misconduct in 2010. Even in 2014, it is arguable that Brand was crafting his image to acquire the support he now relies on after revelations have come to light – laying the groundwork for portraying women not as his victims but as perpetrators in writing.
The somewhat commendable actions taken by the publishing world in response to the recent allegations against Brand prompt important questions about the responsibilities of publishers and their engagement with controversial authorship. While censorship is not the answer, we are left with the challenge of reconciling the continued, and likely increasing, financial and critical success of his work in light of the controversies surrounding him. Perhaps greater scrutiny of literary works calls for greater support of diverse perspectives and more responsible publishing practices, for revoking Brand’s rights to publish his words will not silence his voice or that of his devoted followers – he has made sure of that.
“Russell Brand” by duncan is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0