Russell Davies

Don't try to be interesting. That's a fool's errand. Do interesting instead. Make the world light up by paying proper attention. In this book, writer and strategist Russell Davies has rounded up a bunch of interesting people to help you: - Notice more - practise paying attention and everything gets more interesting - Collect more - gather together what you've noticed, new ideas pop out - Share more - get good at sharing it all and more magic arrives You'll turn the things you notice into a compost of creativity - slow hunches, sparkles, scrapbooks and mood boards. It's where unexpected elements collide to form new ideas. Then you'll share those ideas. And you'll learn something about yourself - your passions and interests. Your life and work will become more creative, fulfilling and fun. Interesting isn't a personality, it's a decision. Don't hunt for diamonds. Get fascinated by pebbles.

A book about PowerPoint built out of PowerPoint - jokes, culture, politics, serious points about power and more, better, jokes.

In an extended account of national identity, this companion volume to People, Places and Passions provides the first detailed study of the sexual and spiritual life of Wales in the period 1870–1945. The author argues that whilst Wales and its people experienced a disenchantment of the spiritual world, a revolution in sexual life was taking place. This innovative study examines how advances in life expectancy and improvements in health were reflected in emotional life. In contrast to the traditional emphasis upon hardship and hardscrabble experiences, this fascinating and beautifully written volume shows that the Welsh were also a free and fun-loving people.

The first of two volumes on the social history of Wales in the period 1870–1948, People, Places and Passions concentrates on the social events and changes which created and forged Wales into the mid-twentieth century. This volume considers a range of social changes little considered elsewhere by studies in Welsh history, accounting for the role played by the people of Wales in times of war and the age of the British Empire, and in technological change and innovation, as they travelled the developing capitalist and consumerist world in search of fame and fortune.

Ronald Searle is perhaps England's most famous cartoonist, and the professionals' choice. Ask any contemporary cartoonist who is the greatest in the post-war era and the unanimous reply will probably be - Ronald Searle! The son of a railwayman, Ronald Searle was born in Cambridge on 3 March 1920, and educated in the town at the Boys' Central School. He started work as a solicitor's clerk, and then joined the hire purchase department of the co-operative Society, studying in the evenings and later full-time at the Cambridge Daily News from the age of fifteen. Enlisting in the Royal Engineers at the outbreak of the Second World War, he spent time in Kirkcudbright, where he encountered evacuees from St. Trinian's, a progressive girls' school situated in Edinburgh. This resulted in his first cartoon for Lilliput, published in October 1941, and later developed into one of his most famous creations, through a series of books and their cinematic spin-offs. Remarkably, he survived the horrific experiences of the Changi Camp, Singapore as a Japanese prisoner-of-war and managed to produce a visual record of life in a prison camp.On his return to England in 1945, he exhibited the surviving pictures at the Cambridge School of Art, and published Forty Drawings. The exhibition and volume together established his reputation as one of Britain's most powerful draughtsmen, and led to several opportunities to record the atmosphere of post-war Europe. His contributed to Punch and these drawings crystallised in, The Female Approach (1949). Throughout the fifties, he produced a large variety of illustrations, which together seemed present a guide to life in Britain in the 1950's. Such was his success that his rejection of family and country in a move to Paris in 1961 came as a great surprise. However, it offered a fresh start, resulting in several solo shows, including a major exhibitions at the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, the Berlin-Dahlem Museum and the Wilhelm-Busch-Museum, Hanover. He also reached a new audience with his contributions to film and television, most notably The Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965). Now remarried and living in rural France, Searle continues to work to his own uncompromising standard.More recent titles include Ronald Searle's Big Fat Cat Book (1982), The Illustrated Winespeak (1983), Ronald Searle's Non-Sexist Dictionary (1988), Slightly Foxed - But Still Desirable (1989), The Tales of Grandpa Cat (1994) and Ronald Searle in Le Monde (2002). This fascinating book is a new edition of Russell Davies' definitive biography. It includes an updated exhibition listings and a bibliography.

This is an account of the origins of Robert Maxwell's business success in the intelligence community, his links thereafter with the world's foremost intelligence agencies, and the backroom diplomacy which took him to the heart of world affairs.