Fayke Newes

'Fake news.' 'Dishonest press.' 'Racist.' 'Mentally unstable.' The insults President Donald Trump and the American news media hurl at each other are nothing new. In Tudor England, printed papers branded the monarch a 'horrible monster' and were in turn accused of publishing 'false fables'. Ever since the invention of the printing press, those in power have seen mass communication as a dangerous threat that usurps their ability to tell people what to think and is capable of stirring up discontent - or even rebellion. In Fayke Newes, historian and international journalist Derek Taylor tracks this long and bloody fight between the press and those in power, through the lives of the men and women who got caught up in the battle. On a journey through the centuries, we criss-cross the Atlantic between Britain and America and discover that neither governments nor journalists have always told the truth.

Derek J. Taylor is a best-selling history writer and former international TV news correspondent. He studied law and history at Oxford before joining Independent Television News of London. As an on-screen correspondent, he reported from Northern Ireland, Rome, South Africa and the United States, and reported on five wars in the Middle East. He is the author of Magna Carta: The Places that Shaped the Great Charter (The History Press, 2015), Who Do the English Think They Are? From the Anglo-Saxons to Brexit (The History Press, 2017) and Fayke Newes: The Media vs the Mighty, From Henry VIII to Donald Trump (The History Press, 2018).