MY STORY

I have written around twenty books under my own name, published in many countries, and ghosted others. I keep copies of them all in a large glass-fronted cupboard, and look at it every day with pride and, to be honest, amazement. I actually did this...?

As a child, I found myself filling notebooks with stories about owls or 'factual' books about the world where these owls lived.

But as a young man, I was more into music than words. I played drums in bands. The best was Valentine's Lark, a prog rock band in London (the guitarist and his wife, Tony and Gaynor Sadler, went on to become Sleeping Lions and successful producers, writers and session players). The most fun was The Oxcentrics, which managed to combine Dixieland jazz with a punk (or punk-ish, anyway) attitude.

However music was a precarious living. I was good, but not good enough. So I put I away the sticks (or at least stopped hoping they would provide me with a career) and got a job in financial services. I went to university to study economics and philosophy – a brilliant move, as I found myself surrounded by amazing, curious, bright people. At first I thought I had found a boundless cornucopia of knowledge: later I realized that academic departments have their limitations. An attempt at a PhD, on the subject of Evolution and Ethics, hit the buffers. I was ahead of my time: most writers then thought there was no connection between the two. The subject is now mainstream.

To recover from the end of my academic dream, I treated myself to a backpacking trip to China. It was another life-changing experience – standing on the Great Wall I suddenly had a kind of personal epiphany, a ‘Cortez-on-Darien’ moment (OK, Keats got his facts wrong, it was Balboa). I also fell in love with China. On my return wanted to read books by people who had done and felt the same. I couldn't find any – all the travel writers at the time had hated the place – so I decided to write my own. Journey to the Middle Kingdom was published in 1991.

I have worked with words ever since.

During the 1990s, I wrote crime fiction, a genre I have always enjoyed. I wrote four novels set in (then) contemporary China. Nobody else was doing that at the time, and it was fun to blaze a trail. The books were published in the UK, USA, Germany and Japan - not China, as the books were too political, even then. Since then, sadly, China has changed: the country I visited was interested in the West, not in a subservient way but just curious and wanting to learn. Now it has become aggressively nationalistic. Maybe this was inevitable – the West wasn’t exactly nice to China in the 19th century.

I stopped the series for various reasons. I sensed the change brewing, but also (let’s be honest) the books were selling nicely but not brilliantly. I also felt that future readers would prefer China fiction by Chinese authors. However I think they have lasted well. The best one is probably the second, now retitled The Hungry Ghost Murder.

I have dipped the odd toe in fiction since. The Enlightenment Club is probably the best example, a novella about a young woman's ambitions to live the best life she possibly can in a world that seems determined to keep her mediocre. I was able to use my love of music – she gets involved in the punk movement but also loves Mozart – and it was challenging to create a lead female character.

To pay the bills, I worked as a copywriter for a marketing agency in Norwich that did, well, everything, from strategic consultancy for the Fine City's top manufacturers to designing CD covers for a local farmer who wrote his own songs. This was a brilliant apprenticeship in a discipline I knew nothing about on arrival – and I also fell in love with Norfolk. Talking of love, I also met my wife there. Our first date was at the pub by the Reedham Ferry. Our daughter was born in Kings Lynn.

In 1999, Mike Southon, an old friend who had co-founded a training business, approached me with the idea of writing up its story. The result was The Beermat Entrepreneur, which doesn't just tell the story but creates a series of models for start-up businesses. It has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide. Mike and I did loads of talks (which involved dressing up in bizarre wigs at one point – I can’t remember why!) and consultancy. Again, this introduced me to the world of entrepreneurship, which I now see as crucial to Britain’s national survival. Innovate or die!

One of my Beermat gigs was at Ashridge Business School, where I helped lecturers turn their expertise into books (Myths about doing Business in China was one product of this, co-authored with consultant Harold Chee). I realized I was good at this (and that subject-matter experts are often very poor at putting their knowledge into book form). A new career, as a co-writer / ghostwriter, has followed. I enjoy helping people 'find their voice' and get their truth onto the written page. Their stories and knowledge are eye-opening. I have particularly enjoyed creating a series of books with entrepreneur Robbie Steinhouse.

When my father died, I had to clear out the attic in the old family home, and found an old stamp album - like many people of my generation, I had collected as a child. I started collecting again, and the stamps took on a new life, now as 'little rectangular time machines'. First Class, A History of Britain in 36 Postage Stamps was born. It was beautifully published, by the sadly now defunct Square Peg, and sold well in Britain and, intriguingly in the USA.

After many years enjoying the Eurovision Song Contest (despite the negative commentary and the UK’s usually poor performance), I decided to follow First Class’ approach of using ‘lenses’ to write about history. The first version of Eurovision! A History of Modern Europe through the World’s Greatest Song Contest came out in 2017. I am just about to start on the fourth edition. Of course, I was delighted when the contest came to Liverpool, and my daughter and I went to one of the live shows (not the final, but one featuring many of the best acts: Kaarija, Loreen, Alessandra).

Going back a bit, in my 40’s I took a vocational course in counselling at the City College in Norwich. I found myself too busy writing to pursue this career, but my interest remained, and I have recently written books on Stephen Karpman's fascinating Drama Triangle and Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Between them, these two models make sense of huge areas of human experience. The former as a series of traps we all fall into, over and over again; the latter as a road-map from passivity to action, from helplessness to control over our lives, from desperation to joyfulness.

I am currently finishing a third history book, looking at how Big Ideas have influenced British politics since the 1832 Great Reform Bill. It's often said nowadays that Big Ideas are somehow pretentious and unworkable, and that politics is about muddling through, adapting to 'Events, dear boy' as they arise. I do not believe this, and the book shows how Big Ideas have led to step changes in political environments over the years - and how without them, administrations just turn into punch-bags at the mercy of history and fickle public opinion. Leaders are supposed to lead, and to do that, they need substantial thinking and sincere emotion behind them.

Life as a professional writer can be up and down. There are moments of profound joy - finding a perfect word, or writing a piece that flows and rings, or that moment when a book suddenly 'works' as a whole rather than as a bundle of interesting ideas. There are bad moments, when words just won't come right, when the gigs suddenly run out (they come back, but it's a nasty moment), or when someone who clearly hasn't 'got' a book goes online to slag it off. There is the quiet pleasure of getting into a job I'm good at, and, when ghosting, through working closely with interesting people.

It's been a wonderful journey, and there’s loads more to do. Like Chris Rea: 'Come so far; but I still got so far to go'.