Fifty Shades of Blue - Book Launch

Fifty Shades of Blue: Launch at Long Last!

Some years ago we started the mammoth journey of creating a mental wellbeing book for the police. At long last, it is in the print house and ready for launch. It has been a surprisingly Herculean effort with many practical and legal challenges, but we have overcome them all. We hope.

The book is a joint production with the Spanish section of the International Police Association, this latter originated from an IPA 3-Region sponsored exchange to Madrid some years ago now.   

The UK version of the book will be launched at 4.00pm on Thursday 10th September 2026 at The Police Rehabilitation Centre, Harrogate, by kind permission of the director. 

We have a Ukrainian police student delegation with us on exchange that week, and it seemed fitting to launch the book whilst they are here, three of the writers are from the Ukrainian policing services, and three are from the local Scarborough and York IPA branch.

We are keeping it a small event, but we hope to include an online connection for the contributors.

The royalties from sales of the book will be donated to Police Care in the UK and on the Spanish production side to their Police Suicide Prevention organisation.

It is the end of a very long production road, but we are thrilled to offer these incredible stories to the policing world in this way. The stories are a mix of the moving, dramatic, and extraordinarily heroic tales from policing around the world. It isn't an official IPA production although many of the writers are members and several belong to the IPA Writers Special Interest Group; it therefore has a strong IPA flavour throughout.  

With very best wishes,

David Lewis,

Section UK IPA and the IPA Writers SIG