Milo Yiannopoulos delays book launch to write about protests

Pre-sale orders of his autobiography soared after the protests at Berkeley

Protesters stand up against the Breitbart News editor attending the university campus (Getty)

Right wing controversialist Milo Yiannopoulos has delayed his book launch by several months so he can write about the protests against him at university campuses.

Pre-sale orders of his book, Dangerous, soared after protests erupted against his planned speech at the University of California, Berkeley, last month while he toured campuses around the US.

The book was supposed to be published in March but will now appear on 13 June.

In a statement on Facebook the Breitbart News editor said: "It would be absurd for me to publish a book without some discussion of the insanity of the last few weeks."

He joked to Fox News in early February that he was most upset about the university campus protests because he did not get to wear his customised outfit, a "Native American headdress" with his name embroidered on it.

He also accused the protesters of using slurs against him like "white supremacist", which he denied, "to legitimise violence" against him.

Publisher Simon & Schuster paid the right wing pundit $250,000 as an advance and has since been widely criticised for the deal, including another of its authors, feminist writer Roxane Gay, dropping her book deal as a result.

"When my book was announced of course there was people saying they were going to burn it while calling me the fascist," said Mr Yiannopoulos.

"This is the sort of irony the progressive left in America doesn’t seem to appreciate."

Simon & Schuster, the same company to publish Hillary Clinton’s forthcoming book of personal essays, wrote to authors to assure them that Mr Yiannopoulos’ book would not contain hate speech.

It would be "a substantive examination" of free speech and political correctness, President and CEO Carolyn Reidy wrote.

After the Berkeley protest, President Trump threatened to pull federal funding from the university, which he would not be able to do.

"[Mr Trump] has my back," Mr Yiannopoulos told Fox News.

The writer's former boss, Steve Bannon, is now chief strategist to the President. Mr Bannon said last July that Breitbart was a "platform for the alt-right", the white supremacist movement.

Mr Yiannopoulos, who wrote that feminism was comparable to "cancer", said he was writing a book about Gamergate in 2014 and a book called The Sociopaths of Silicon Valley in 2015, but neither appeared.

The UK branch of his publisher also reportedly declined to offer him a book deal due to his relative obscurity in the UK, despite his British nationality.

He was permanently banned from Twitter in 2016 after he allegedly incited his followers to troll Ghostbusters actor Leslie Jones.