We Need Snowflakes : In defence of the sensitive, the angry and the offended. As featured on R4 Woman's Hour

Is 'cancel culture' spiralling out of hand? Are the youth of today oversensitive, mollycoddled and intellectually weak? Does the scourge of political correctness threaten the very fabric of our society?

Indignant politicians, columnists and baby boomers certainly think so. The problem, we're told repeatedly, is that the current generation is full of hypersensitive cowards; 'snowflakes' who are obsessed with making mountains out of molehills. A safe space here, an unruly protest there, it's all proof that they don't know how to handle the real world. But what if you were to drown out that noise and talk to the snowflakes themselves? What are they actually asking for? How are they going about it? And who's really benefitting from all the anger being directed towards them?

In this timely and subversive book, journalist and author Hannah Jewell investigates the stories behind the headlines and finds that, shockingly, most of them have been blown out of proportion. 'Cancel culture' isn't really a culture at all, many of the people who claim to have been silenced are doing quite well now, thank you very much, and maybe it's ok to think swastikas daubed in faeces in a campus bathroom is something that should be adequately investigated. The truth is that snowflakes understand plenty about the 'real world', which is why they want to see it change.

And that is what their detractors are actually scared of.

Check out our Read Think Act video with Hannah Jewell: