I have begun reading Richard Overy, Blood and Ruins: the Great Imperial War 1931-45 (2021). This new comprehensive world history of World War Two renames, redates and rethinks that conflict that still dominates the mental world of world leaders
The third chapter of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat is the title essay, ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat’. It plays with Wallace Stevens’ poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, and seeks to open up the reader’s mind to the many unexpected, even poetic ways you can look at this plain, humble, even despised personality, the bureaucrat.
The second chapter of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat is Silenced Voice of the…
My new book, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat, is now out! Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat: Writing on Governing, is both memoir and essay collection. I think it breaks new ground because bureaucrats don’t publish memoirs. It will change how you see government, politics, working life, and bureaucrats.
John Menadue and the team at Pearls and Irritations has published an article of mine on the public service today and the problems of the overuse of consultants.
During the week I have been finalising my next book, 13 Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat, and reading some essays and poems of Marina Tvetaeva (1892-1941), the great Russian poet, collected in Art and the Light of Conscience. A strange mix, true, but that is the life of my strange mind.
I have posted this evening on my podcast and on Youtube a special episode.
Here I talk openly for the first time about how I wrote my book, From the Burning Archive, which you can buy at the Amazon affiliate link or other online book retailers.
I have published From the Burning Archive: essays and fragments 2015-2022. You can buy it as print or e-book here at Amazon and also at other online retailers.
Here is an excerpt of the introductory essay of that collection. It tells how a dream image became a poem became a blog became a podcast and then an author platform.
Over the last few weeks I have collected a fair swag of Russian world history and literature.
The focus of my writing attention over the last couple of weeks has been on editing a collection of my blog posts that I will publish as books.I don’t know how common it is to republish blogs as books, if in edited and curated form. It seems little different to me to the many collections of oped, short essays, book reviews and occasional pieces that do get published quite often.