In the latest example of ‘cancel culture’, novelist Gillian Philip was last week jettisoned from her role writing titles for a major publishing company.

It came after the writer, who has penned a popular series of books for eight-to-12-year-olds, added the hashtag #IStandWithJKRowling to her Twitter handle.

Her move sparked a torrent of online abuse and emails to her employer Working Partners, a ‘fiction packaging’ firm which devises series for publishing houses and commissions authors to write them.

Ms Philip, 56, had expressed her support for the Harry Potter creator after she retweeted an article referring to ‘people who menstruate’ and questioned why the story did not use the word ‘women’.