Politics

Michael Gove’s bookshelf contains some questionable inclusions

Michael Gove’s bookshelf has been called into question after his wife shared a photo on Twitter.

Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine posted a “special treat” for her trolls yesterday, seemingly goading the likes of Alastair Campbell with books on Tony Blair amongst others.

But it didn’t take long for people to spot a more sinister tinge to the bookcase.

Visible in the picture is a notoriously racist book on intelligence and IQ and a book by a prominent Holocaust denier.

The Bell Curve by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray is known to be a dubious work of ‘political science’ which claims that a person’s intelligence is determined by their genetics.

The book was instantly controversial on its publication in 1994 for arguing that factors like race and class have an impact on a person’s intelligence, correlating it with factors such as being born out of wedlock and living in poverty.

There is also a book by Holocaust denier David Irving, who characterises Hitler as a rational leader who has been misrepresented and slandered throughout history.

He also made much of the fact that he could not find a written order for the Holocaust to be carried out, offering a £1,000 reward to anyone who could.

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Jack Peat

Jack is a business and economics journalist and the founder of The London Economic (TLE). He has contributed articles to VICE, Huffington Post and Independent and is a published author. Jack read History at the University of Wales, Bangor and has a Masters in Journalism from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

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