Something was missing from Marks & Spencer’s shareholders’ meeting. It was the man from the Pru, standing up to propose a vote of thanks. This used to be one of the City’s most regular fixtures. Neither M&S nor the Prudential are quite the forces they were, but in those days the Pru was M&S’s biggest
My book Creators was finished some weeks ago and whizzed off to the publishers without my having fixed on any theory of the creative process. But the problem continues to nag at me. Take this example. In October 1841, Dickens was operated on for fistula. This piece of surgery was then horrific and extremely painful,
Risk assessment is the mantra of our time. You cannot organise a girls’ school hockey match without having to assess the risk that the combatants will bark their knuckles. The baskets of flowers that used to hang outside the Ring of Bells pub in Norton Fitzwarren have been assessed as a risk to passers-by who,
Meetings can be a substitute for work, and an expensive one, at that, which is why the thrifty bankers at HSBC had a rule about them. A note had to be kept of every meeting, and the last line of the note would read, ‘This meeting lasted for one hour and 33 minutes and is
It is remarkable that the English, so reserved in their emotional displays in ordinary existence, should have always shown such capacity, even genius, for enacting them on the stage. Or perhaps it is only logical, theatre being for us an escape from our natural inhibitions. Whatever the explanation, we have led the world in acting
International affairs would go more smoothly if leading politicians had better manners. It must be said that Tony Blair sets a good example in this respect. He is one of the most courteous men I have come across in public life and shows up his European colleagues, on the whole an ill-bred lot. During the
Apologies for absence. I was, indeed, away last week — in airports, in limousines, in meeting rooms booked under false names in secluded hotels, and in the engine-rooms of my financial advisers, urging the number-crunchers on. Secrecy was of the essence, as with all coups, and there can have been few so dramatic as this
Americans grumble to me that the price of cabs in London is outrageous, and they are right. I tell them to take a double-decker red bus, but they look doubtful. Too complicated? Certainly, when I am in New York, I hesitate before I take one of those convenient buses that go up and down Fifth
I went to a different prison last week, in an ancient market town, to see a man about an arson. He had set fire to a house with four of his friends — or should I say former friends (his subsequent apologies not having been accepted by them) — in it. He said that he
Mr Alan Duncan, the Conservative transport spokesman, announcing in the Daily Telegraph his candidacy for the party leadership, was quoted as likening the Tories’ situation to Marks & Spencer’s: ‘…a fantastic brand in good times, but if you have a lousy CEO and lousy knickers you don’t do well, and like M&S we need both
Nothing clears the air like a really good family row. Funerals can bring them on. Cousins and aunts, wives and husbands, even, say what they have long since thought and then think of something else to say. What with the nasty accident to Europe’s constitution, and the dawning recognition that the single currency may follow
The Prime Minister likes the idea of making poverty history. It gives him the chance to forget about Europe and think about Africa. Bob Geldof and his band can know that the lead singer of Ugly Rumours will be with them in the spirit, and so will any number of marginal voters who never warmed
There has to be a first time for everything, and now the French have taken my advice. ‘Allez France’, so I urged them last week, ‘votez Non, votez souvent’ — and they did. Offered Europe’s new constitution on a plate with lettuce round it, they sent it straight back like a grounded soufflé. Now I
Here we are at the moment of truth, if such a term can be applied to a French referendum. Last time round, the result was swung by boxes of Oui votes flown in from France’s ex-colonies. This time la France outre-mer has been deluged with money from Brussels. (Where does Brussels get the money? Where
A Scottish accountant has his own way of injecting the fear of God into his hearers. This must be one reason why Douglas Flint is finance director of HSBC, and made him the natural choice when his fellow accountants at Cima wanted someone to lecture on pensions. On the day, he came right up to
Lord Beaverbrook always pronounced it ‘yat’. He said, ‘Let me give you some good advice, Mr Johnson. Hesitate a long time before you buy yourself an expensive steam yat.’ There are at least 40 different ways of spelling the word, from yeagh, holke, yuath, yought, yott and yuacht, to jact, zeaghr, yoathe and zoughe. ‘And
At last some excitement. The next vote is on Monday, and this one could go to a recount. All eyes will be on the weather-vane in the Bank of England’s Court Room, which shows its directors how the wind is blowing. Next door, in an elegant anteroom, the nine members of the Monetary Policy Committee
In his book of proverbs, Blake writes, ‘A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.’ That is true enough but it is not my tree-proverb, which runs, ‘An artist sees trees he can paint.’ When I look at trees, my eyes search instinctively for paintable ones, whose trunk and branches, leaves
I found the Chancellor outside his local supermarket, conducting what he called a stationary walkabout. He had brought his spaniel, which canvassed the voters by licking them: ‘I suppose,’ said one, ‘that with a dog like that, you can’t be all bad.’ On the political battleground, this was a peaceful enclave, and indeed some of
There’s only one thing worse than slavery, of course, and that’s freedom. I don’t mean, I hasten to add, my own freedom, to which I am really rather attached; no, it is other people’s freedom, and what they choose to do with it, that appals me. They have such bad taste. The notion of self-expression