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Ebury Publishing imprint Virgin Books is reviving its W H Allen imprint, publishing a list of six popular history, politics, science and current affairs titles a year.
Virgin Books publishing director Ed Faulkner will head the imprint, with a book by former US vice-president and global warming campaigner Al Gore to be one of the first books on the list.
Faulkner acquired UK and Commonwealth rights in the title, Drivers of Global Change, through Random House US, which will see Gore discussing how current political, social and economic forces are shaping the world.
The list will launch in autumn 2012. Other books are in the final stages of negotiations, but one of them will be penned by an actor who also works for a think-tank.
W H Allen was founded in the 18th century, publishing pamphlets on contemporary political and social problems. In the 20th century, it was the second publishing house after Penguin to use the mass-market paperback format, with authors including Richard Nixon, General George Patton and Alan Sillitoe. W H Allen was acquired by Virgin in the 1980s, which stopped publishing under the W H Allen name in 1991.
Faulkner said each title will be treated individually, with no set plan on which format to publish initially. He said: "Digital will be a strand of it but we'll also be publishing beautiful hardbacks and innovative paperbacks.
"It's interesting because on the one hand you have 24-hour news channels, and then you've got your long-researched books that have been years in gestation. There is this middle ground that presents a really exciting opportunity for digital books and you can straddle the divide—bring back the pamphlet, the essay, those times when you need someone to give a bit more perspective."
He added: "Al Gore's wide international appeal makes him the perfect author with which to launch this imprint and we are honoured to have him on the list. This will be an independent-minded imprint and we hope to make it a destination list for new authors that will reach an engaged and intelligent audience."