They’re lying about your history
History is a threat because it tells you who you are and takes power away from people who want to convince you otherwise. This book tells the story of how the study of our past was coopted by radicals, how activist-academics collaborate with the media to distort the facts, and how recent scientific discoveries pose a threat to their woke narratives.
Coming November 2026
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About the book
Why does our past seem to be constantly deconstructed, revised and challenged? Public confidence in the institutions responsible for studying history is declining, yet the mechanisms by which ideological assumptions can enter academic disciplines—and subsequently be amplified or distorted by the media—are poorly understood. Woking the Dead traces this process from the post-war transformation of archaeology and anthropology through the rise of contemporary identity politics, examining cases in which archaeological and historical evidence has been interpreted or presented through an ideological lens. It also considers how the emergence of ancient DNA has challenged some of these narratives.
Fed up with being told that Cheddar Man is black, that Vikings were transgender, Anglo-Saxons never existed and black people were in Britain before whites? This book not only tells you why these claims are wrong, but explains how we got to the stage where such claims can even be expressed without ridicule. It also names and shames the academics responsible for pushing woke history and archaeology.
About the author
Tom Rowsell is a writer and documentary film maker. He has made films on prehistory, early medieval Europe and Germanic religion for Survive the Jive since 2010, and presents the Jive Talk podcast.
Woking the Dead is his second book, having previously written a graphic novel, The Spirit of Yule, in 2018.