Pop fiction’s Fab Four on tour in Europe to fight ‘disaster that is Brexit’

All we can hear is political noise. We have no idea what ordinary British people are feeling,” said a guy in Madrid, pondering the unfathomable mystery of Brexit.  “It’s such a relief to know you still care.” We were at the British ambassador’s house in a leafy suburb in northwest Madrid, on the second leg of a diplomatic offensive led by four of the United Kingdom’s bestselling authors (with around 300 million book sales between them). 

“Writers are solitary creatures,” said Kate Mosse (best known for Labyrinth, the first in her Languedoc trilogy) to the gathering of fans organised by the British Council. “It’s not often we get to go out and play with our friends.” ​Mosse was referring to her legions of readers, but also to her three fellow band members: Ken Follett (The Pillars of the Earth), Jojo Moyes (Me Before You) and Lee Child (the Jack Reacher series). Writers often claim to be failed musicians, and this newly formed supergroup had barely set foot on the road when they were being billed as popular fiction’s answer to Abba or the Fab Four. There was bound to be dancing at some point (on stage in Berlin, as it happens, where a thousand people turned out to greet them). 

“Four heavyweights of British commercial fiction yesterday mobilised against the disaster known as Brexit,” declared the Spanish daily El País on 18 November. The aim was to declare their “unconditional love for Europe” and an unshakeable belief in the unifying power of story. The tour was funded by the writers’ foreign publishers and the love underpinned by a solid history of enviably healthy sales. Which is not to diminish the heart of the enterprise. In the words of Birgit Lübbe (of German publisher Bastei Lübbe): “We support the Friendship Tour because the friendship between our authors and their loyal fans, as well as the friendship between our authors and us, transcends national borders.” Differences of geography, Mosse said, are as nothing to the gulf between readers and non-readers.