Penguin Special

The story of Penguin Books, Allen Lane and how they changed the world, to celebrate the 90th anniversary of Penguin

By founding Penguin books and popularizing the paperback, Allen Lane not only changed publishing in Britain, he was also at the forefront of a social and cultural revolution that saw the millions of people given access to what had previously been the preserve of a wealthy few.

In Penguin Special, Jeremy Lewis brings this extraordinary era brilliantly to life, recounting how Allen Lane came to launch his Penguins for the price of a packet of cigarettes; how they became enormously influential in alerting the public to the threat of Nazi Germany; and how Penguin itself gradually became a national institution, like the BBC and the NHS, whilst at the same time challenging the status quo through the famous Lady Chatterley case. Above all, it is the story of how one often fallible, complex man used his vision to change the world.