”I don’t have any heroes, they’re all useless”, said John Lydon in 1976, giving voice to a destructive impulse that would go on to dominate the next half-century or so of intellectual, cultural and political life.

But isn’t one of the main problems with the modern world that we no longer have any real sense of what heroism is? Is heroism being able to attain the heights others cannot, or is it less remarkable to be extraordinary, than to heroically endure the humdrum? What if we recovered heroism from the hands of the fascists and the right-wing populists, and proclaimed that – despite everything – a hero can and should be something to be?

In these personal, provocative essays, the authors behind the uncompromising project that is Repeater Books come together to redefine the idea of the hero for a twenty-first-century public which desperately needs something to believe in. From Eric Cantona to Wile E. Coyote, Bruno Latour to Paula Rego, forgotten legends and anonymous family members, this compendium of extraordinary human behaviour is essential reading for anyone who has ever thought that, despite what Jean-Paul Sartre said, heaven is other people.