I am a keen supporter of Next-Up, an organisation created by the talented Victoria Tomlinson. Next-Up encourages retired professional and business folk to put their ‘parked’ experience to good use with voluntary organisations, charities and SMEs. It is a fact that too many highly experienced executives hit the retirement button and head for sunnier climes […]

Douglas Adamson, author of a Yorkshire trilogy of crime and lust, shares how he self-published and then found a publisher.

Douglas Adamson, author of a Yorkshire trilogy of crime and lust, shares how he self-published and then found a publisher.

Last week I met an Englishman living in south western France. Nothing unusual in that you might think, but how he got there is. The man, who for the purposes of this reading, I will call David, was born brought up in Barnsley and was an IT specialist working in the financial district of New […]

I’m currently reading a fascinating book called ‘Walking with Cattle.’ I know it hardly seems an immediately enticing read but I came across it in a splendid new, independent, book shop in Fort William in the Highlands of Scotland. Despite Fort William’s strategic location close to the foot of Ben Nevis and enjoying magnificent views of Loch […]

I came across this piece of dialogue in Scott Fitzgerald’s great novel, Tender is the Night. Dick Diver, one of the central characters, says: “Good manners are an admission that everybody is so tender that they have to be handled with gloves. Now, human respect – you don’t call a man a coward or a liar lightly, but […]

The communications industry is obsessed with ‘content’. In layman’s language this means copy and visual material for websites, blogs, social media sites and internal briefing documents. There is an overload of ‘content’ and therefore a greater need for brevity and conciseness. Engaging audiences among the tsunami of non-stop communications has become harder to achieve and […]