David Boyle

If you thought being middle-class meant your own home, something set aside for the kids and a comfortable retirement - think again.

Mind and Tao: Personal Reflections on Life and the Universe by Garvin David Boyle is a journey through the philosophical and mystical landscapes of human existence. Drawing on the wisdom of Taoism, Stoicism, and modern psychology, Boyle offers profound insights into living a mindful and harmonious life. Through reflections on essential principles like humility, compassion, and non-striving, this book provides a thoughtful guide to navigating the complexities of the modern world. In addition to practical advice, Mind and Tao features a rich collection of essays, poems, and conversations that explore consciousness, synchronicity, and the nature of reality. Boyle's writing invites readers to delve into the deeper questions of life with curiosity and openness, making this book a valuable companion for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of themselves and the universe.

Oh, Shenandoah, I love your daughter.And though I felt comfortable, loving even, with so many others, I find I can no longer continuemy life as an actuary and clerkin a middle-sized firm of city insurance brokerswithout her devotion, love, passion, desire, thrill, excitement, hand across the table on a cold winter evening, unwashed face across the pillow in the morning.I love your daughterand the earth turned on its axis when I did so, and whole seasons have shifted around the globe, the ocean has swallowed up New York, Sydney, Tokyo, and caused a run on the pound, the British Chancellor has resigned and the stars have alteredtheir paths.... And so on... There is a kind of progression here, but I didn't want to jinx it by trying to describe it. Either way, many of these poems were written in my thirties - hence the 'thirtysomething' title taken from the television series of the same name and time. A small piece of nostalgia there... 'Oh Shenandoah' was intended as a kind of rhetorical acceleration. I had the idea waiting outside the only shower room on a Writing Space writing course in the Loire Valley and listening to someone inside singing the old Shenandoah song. That was my first published poem, which managed to scrape in as a finalist and runner-up in the national Observer-Arvon poetry competition in 1995. In fact, this and so much else I owe to Carol Cornish and Writing Space, under whose tutelage so many of these poems took their first faltering steps. I stopped writing poetry almost entirely about a decade later, when - having had children - I suddenly had no time to mooch around in the way that poets need to. I hope to go back to the practice one day, when I also hope I feel a little differently to the somewhat obsessive type revealed in these pages. - David Boyle " I loved it.I smiled from the first line. The passion & openheartedness shone through and showed the youthful spirit and honesty that still flows from David's fingers to this day. God fear the rest of us poets when he picks up his pen and writes poetry again.." - Simon Zec

The word 'tickbox' emerged recently as a cynical angle on official or corporate incompetence. They had 'ticked the box' - people said - but failed to act. It is increasingly used to describe this gap between official spin and reality.Yet, says David Boyle in this powerful expose of tickbox culture, that is just the tip of a vast tickbox iceberg. The only people who remain blind to this gap are those rich or powerful enough to run the world, and behind Tickbox lies an insidious philosophy of automation and the misuse of data that weighs heavily on every one of us. It makes our public services less effective - and makes them soar in costs - it lies behind so many stark injustices and disasters, from Grenfell Tower to the deportation of the Windrush generation. Yet the system carries on, and grows in power and strengths - vacuuming up the resources of the NHS pursuing pointless targets or badgering us to reveal how much we had enjoyed our visit to their bank counter - because those who run the world remain committed to it.It is time we escaped the tentacles of Tickbox. Boyle suggests a series of ways out - starting with recognising the danger and calling it out for what it is - a massive failure, corroding our lives and our ability, as human beings, to act on the world.

The word 'tickbox' emerged recently as a cynical angle on official or corporate incompetence. They had 'ticked the box' - people said - but failed to act. It is increasingly used to describe this gap between official spin and reality.Yet, says David Boyle in this powerful expose of tickbox culture, that is just the tip of a vast tickbox iceberg. The only people who remain blind to this gap are those rich or powerful enough to run the world, and behind Tickbox lies an insidious philosophy of automation and the misuse of data that weighs heavily on every one of us. It makes our public services less effective - and makes them soar in costs - it lies behind so many stark injustices and disasters, from Grenfell Tower to the deportation of the Windrush generation. Yet the system carries on, and grows in power and strengths - vacuuming up the resources of the NHS pursuing pointless targets or badgering us to reveal how much we had enjoyed our visit to their bank counter - because those who run the world remain committed to it.It is time we escaped the tentacles of Tickbox. Boyle suggests a series of ways out - starting with recognising the danger and calling it out for what it is - a massive failure, corroding our lives and our ability, as human beings, to act on the world.

The stories in Truth Hurts explore the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of human beings as they confront everyday situations-situations at times baffling, uncomfortable, and complex-but always honest, intense, and unpredictable. This collection, featuring fifteen raw and vivid narratives, will remind the reader that truth hurts-more than we realize.

New Year 1915. The world is locked in a terrible conflict, and Winston Churchill has conceived of a bold plan. Constantinople would be seized and Turkey knocked out of the war. The key is the Dardanelles. The British submarine E14 approached the portal of the Ottoman Empire, viewing the ominous darkness from its small conning tower, eight feet above the waves. Its commander, Courtney Boyle, had told his superiors he thought the voyage - probably the longest dive ever contemplated in a submarine - was impossible. It would also take him past the wreckage of the submarines that had tried to pass that way in the days before: their dead buried on the beach, their survivors in captivity. The crew had said their goodbyes. They had written their farewell letters and given them into safekeeping, knowing that the chances were now against their survival. This book sets out what happened next and tells the story of the pioneering submarines of the Dardanelles.

On his way back from the crusades, one of England's most famous and romantic medieval kings was ship-wrecked and stranded near Venice. Trying to make his way home in disguise, he was arrested and imprisoned and effectively disappeared. He didn't return home for another fifteen months, and at enormous cost - a quarter of the entire wealth of England was paid to win his release.The extraordinary events surrounding Richard the Lionheart's disappearance provides the background to some of the most colourful and enduring legends - Robin Hood, the Sheriff of Nottingham, the discovery of King Arthur's grave, and above all, the story of Blondel, Richard's faithful minstrel, and his journey across central Europe - singing under castle towers - until he finds the missing king.Blondel's Song tells the tale of one of the most peculiar incidents of medieval history, and the background to the real Blondel and his fellow troubadours, as well as the courts of love, the Holy Grail, emergence of gothic cathedrals like Notre Dame and Chartres, and the unique moment of tolerance in the West - when Europe shared a language, and a new culture of music, romance and chivalry.

David Boyle guides us through the next big thing in Western living – the determined rejection of the fake, the virtual, the spun and the mass-produced, in the search for authenticity. The charms of the global and virtual future we were all brought up to expect, where meals would be eaten in the form of pills and machines would do all our work, have worn rather thin. It's not that we don't want all the advantages of progress, we just want a future that manages to be local and real too. Tracking the struggle for reality from Japanese theme parks to mock-Tudor villas and from Byron to Big Brother, ‘Authenticity’ explains where our reactions against spin and fakeness come from – and where they are going. The current revival of real food, real business, real culture flies in the face of expert opinion from politicians, economists, advertisers and big business – and they're having to run to keep up as our hype attention-span gets ever shorter. Optimistic, witty, highly thought-provoking and packed with fascinating stories, Boyle’s search asks whether coolness is dead, how real reality is and whether realpolitik can ever change into real politics. He puts authenticity firmly on the map, lifting the lid on all the other symptoms of this powerful new phenomenon – revealing the unexpected force that looks set to change all our lives.

Too often we try to quantify what can't actually be measured, counting people, but not individuals, results rather than intelligence, and benefit claimants instead of poverty. This book examines our obsession with numbers and the danger of valuing statistics over non-calculable elements.