Liz Truss’s book about her 49-day stint as prime minister sold 2,228 copies in the UK during its first week on sale, after a wall-to-wall promotional media blitz. Ten Years to Save the West: Lessons from the Only Conservative in the Room, combines an account of Truss’s time in office with a call to arms for the political right. Nielsen sales data puts Truss’s effort in 70th place on last week’s bestsellers’ list, outsold by titles such as the Ultimate Air Fryer Cookbook and More Confessions of a Forty-something F**k Up. Truss, 48, has said her book is “not a traditional political memoir”. In it, she reveals how Queen Elizabeth II advised her upon becoming prime minister to “pace yourself”. The monarch died days later, which Truss writes felt “utterly unreal” and caused her to ask: “Why me? Why now?” Biteback, the publisher that paid Truss an initial advance of £1,512 for the book, pointed out the sales still made it the sixth bestselling nonfiction book in the UK last week. The publishing company, owned by the former Conservative donor Lord Ashcroft, specialises in political books – a tough section of the market where few books sell in large numbers.
By comparison, David Cameron managed to sell about 21,000 copies of his memoir in its first week, while Tony Blair’s autobiography sold 92,000 in the same timeframe. Although Truss’s figures pale in comparison, she beat both on a copies-sold-per-day-in-Downing-Street basis. Margaret Thatcher was estimated to have sold 500,000 copies of her memoir but other past occupants of No 10 have mixed records when it comes to book sales. John Major’s memoir sold just 5,415 copies in its first week but went on to exceed 200,000 in total. Edward Heath’s The Course of My Life struggled to surpass 20,000 copies, while Gordon Brown’s My Life, Our Times sold about 30,000. Truss has also been promoting the book in the US, where she appeared at a number of Republican events and warned about establishment elites who she said had stopped her from implementing her plans for Britain. The book has already been edited to remove a quote misattributed to the Jewish banker Mayer Amschel Rothschild, which has previously been used in antisemitic conspiracies. The Guardian’s reviewer described Truss’s book as “one of the most shamelessly unrepentant, petulant, politically and economically jejune and cliche-ridden books I’ve read”.