Described by the Daily Mail as 'one of Britain's leading left-wing thinkers' and by the Guardian as an 'obnoxious intellectual wind-up merchant', essayist and bruiser Brendan O'Neill is no stranger to controversy. In this selection of recent essays, he explores everything from free speech to feminism, porn to Thomas Paine, coal (good) to Chomsky (bad). Fuelled by humanism, the essays put the case for a new enlightenment, and for rediscovering our faith in 'the dignity and excellence of man'.

Brendan O'Neill is editor of the online magazine spiked, and a frequent contributor to The Spectator and The Australian. He was nominated as Columnist of the Year at the 2014 Professional Publishers Awards in the UK, for his column in the Big Issue.