Plotters: Wanstead Book Festival presents Lizzie Dearden

Since 2017, the UK has seen 15 terrible terrorist attacks. But the atrocities we see on our BBC news alerts are the tip of an iceberg – at least twice as many plots have been foiled. Some were thwarted by nerve-wracking undercover operations; others were narrowly averted by heroic citizens, or ruined by the absurd mistakes of would-be attackers. Invariably, the all-too-human stories of these failed terrorists reveal the true picture of UK extremism. Author Lizzie Dearden, who at one point reported on Wanstead news for the Recorder, has interviewed counter-terrorism figures and assembled astonishing court testimony in writing Plotters: The UK Terrorists Who Failed. It offers a disturbing certainty – plotters will keep coming and to confront them we need to understand them.