Amazon – Under The Hood

To a presentation, last night, by Amazon UK. Chris North, head of Amazon Books UK, introduced two other team members, and they all gave a good account of themselves. Here are the key points I noted:

Amazon is obsessed with what’s good for their customers. They have 64m active [...]

Creators of What?

Very interesting article from Ben Stein (himself a pretty interesting right-wing polymath – and screen actor, to boot) in this week’s American Spectator. The moral justification of capitalism has always been its ability to generate wealth – a lot of it for a relatively small number of people, it’s true, but also jobs – [...]

Why Do Writers Write?

To the International Theatre Forum today, for a fascinating debate. The chair was Sir Arnold Wesker, author of 42 plays, 4 volumes of short stories, 2 volumes of essays, and considered one of the key figures in 20th Century drama.
Introduced to the great man, I said the inevitable: “I studied your plays at school!” then [...]

Cattle Antibiotic Moves Forward Despite Fears of Human Risk

As some people will know, I fell into writing largely by accident, a couple of decades ago. My experiences as an author, and my prior background in marketing, persuaded me to become a literary agent.
My very first book, “Why You Don’t Need Meat”, was an investigation into some of the meat industry’s shadier practices, [...]