connectors, mavens and sales(wo)men

The blogs of the last 2 days have been so long (blame the weather!) that I wasn’t able to follow up some points. Sunday’s blog (Change that lasts) referred to a paper by Matthew Andrew which brought out the role of networks in change. It’s interesting that he made no reference to the vast literature on managing change – just a few references to some pragmatic articles. One might have expected him to refer to the notion of the tipping point which Malcolm Gladwell popularised in his book of that name in 2000. Gladwell identified three key factors which determine whether a particular trend will “tip” into wide-scale popularity - the Law of the Few, the Stickiness Factor, and the Power of Context.
The Law of the Few contends that before widespread popularity can be attained, a few key types of people must champion an idea, concept, or product before it can reach the tipping point. Gladwell describes these key types as Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen. (And a maven – in case you didn’t know - is a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others. The word maven comes from the Hebrew, via Yiddish, and means one who understands, based on an accumulation of knowledge). If individuals representing all three of these groups endorse and advocate a new idea, it is much more likely that it will tip into exponential success. The “connectors” are, I think, the people Andrews was talking about. A horrible word was invented in the 1970s to draw attention to their role and significance – the “reticulist”! This word – from the Tavistock Institute – did not tip into general use!
The other 2 concepts are, frankly, not so well dealt with. The Stickiness Factor as the quality that compels people to pay close, sustained attention to a product, concept, or idea. Stickiness is hard to define, and its presence or absence often depends heavily on context. Often, the way that the Stickiness Factor is generated is unconventional, unexpected, and contrary to received wisdom. The concept that Gladwell terms the Power of Context is enormously important in determining whether a particular phenomenon will tip into widespread popularity. Even minute changes in the environment can play a major factor in the propensity of a given concept attaining the tipping point.

The New Zealand Government used Wiki in an interesting experiment – to encourage public participation. They brought in OECD’s Joanne Caddy who had edited the OECD’s Beyond Scrutiny I listed recently to help them with this experiment. Judging, however, from its use, it does not seem a great success -
Finally a nice site for those who like Scottish scenery and poetry

open government; government structures and roles

My resolution of reading each day at least one Googlebook and one of the countless articles I’ve downloaded and hoarded is not easy to keep. Surfing is addictive and distractive. What treasures are there! When looking at the extensive (39 pages!) summary report which the World Bank had prepared on a 2007 workshop it held on “Social accountability measures”, I googled the name of one of the presenters to see if I could find the full paper I did! But I also very quickly found 4 relevant books of more than 250 pages each –
Beyond public scrutiny (OECD 2007) which gives many examples of citizen involvement in the scrutiny of public services; Public Services Delivery looks a useful guide to performance management issues for public managers; Briefing Book on Decentralisation in Kosovo is an amazing compendium from a cooperation between WB and Soros writers. And finally a book on Participatory Governance UN 2006);
So – one step forward and four backwards as far as making an impact on my library is concerned! I need to install one of these protective buttons on the laptop which prevents my access to google scholar!

I am, however, steadily getting through the World Bank’s book on Governance Reform under real world conditions . It takes what is, for it, a new angle – the “communication perspective” which cynics might summarise as - thinking about the context in which you are working; and adjusting your tactics/ messages accordingly! “Stakeholder analysis” has become the usual (ugly) way to describe the process.
In an early chapter a journalist who was a staff member of WB India recounts some tasks he was given to prepare briefing notes explaining the negative reaction to WB projects. The piece starts with one of the best accounts I’ve ever read of the messy reality of the policy process. When I used to do training on political roles – I used a simple matrix I devised a long time ago – which identifies the 4 worlds (and therefore sets of pressures) a local politician lives in – local electorate; party or interest group to which he owes most of his chances of reelection; elected political colleagues and officials of the council; the personal. I would the suggest that his perceptions of the pressures from these worlds determined the sort of role he played – “populist”, “ideologue”, “spokesman” and “maverick” .
The journalist’s account also reminded me of the way I first encountered the machinery of (local) government 40 years ago – as consisting of bunches of specialists who are first trained and then structured to see the world in very different ways – whether engineers, economists, lawyers, social workers, police etc
In the 1970s we thought that corporate management was the answer ie a new breed of people who could be independent from the fray and help us politicians cut through the these different perceptions and special pleading..But the Chief Executive Departments just set up their own separate power system in turn. And that was the start of the dreadful management revolution which has stamped itself on the face of professionals and patients for example in the health system. Official figures show that the number of managers in the NHS has doubled over the past 10 years – and Kenneth Roy in Scottish Review recently exposed the scandal of their rising pay.
Perhaps, I thought all of 35 years ago, the answer lies in the political system – at a local level in the committee system which, I argued, was just a front for the power of the permanent official. So we set up member-officer groups to look at the neglected issues which straddled the boundaries of departments (marginal). One of the papers on my website is a paper I wrote more than 10 years ago to try to pull out lessons from that experience –
“Local authority services” I argued in the paper “ were designed to deal with individuals - pupils, clients, miscreants - and do not have the perspectives, mechanisms or policies to deal with community malfunctioning. For that, structures are needed which have a "neighbourhood-focus" and "problem focus".
“The Strathclyde strategy did in fact develop them - in the neighbourhood structures which allowed officers, residents and councillors to take a comprehensive view of the needs of their area and the operation of local services: and in the member-officer groups.
“But we did not follow through the logic - and reduce the role of committee system which sustains so much of the policy perversities. That would have required a battle royal! After all, it took another decade before the issue of an alternative to the Committee system came on the national agenda - to be fiercely resisted by local authorities. Even now, the furthest they seem to go in their thinking is the "Cabinet system" - which has been offered as an option several times over the past 30 years (Wheatley; Stewart) but never, until now, considered worthy of even debate. The system of directly elected mayors - which serves other countries well - still does not command favour. One of the great marketing tricks of the English is to have persuaded the world of our long traditions of democracy. The truth is that our forefathers so mistrusted the dangers of unacceptable lay voices controlling the council chambers that they invented a range of traditions such as the one creating a system of dual professional and political leadership in local government. As the powers of local government increased in the post-war period - this became a recipe for confusion and irresponsibility. Little wonder that it was called "The Headless State" (Regan). Chairmen of Committees have been able to blame Directors; and Directors, Chairmen.
“It is now (1999) interesting to see some local authorities now organised on the basis that was beginning to appear obvious to some of us in the late 1970s. The more progressive councils now have three different political structures -
• One for thinking and reviewing - ie across traditional boundaries of hierarchy, department and agency (our
Member-Officer review groups)
• One for ensuring that it is performing its legal requirements (the traditional committee system)
• One for acting in certain fields with other agencies to achieve agreed results (Joint Ventures for geographical areas or issues)"

In fact the “review” process caught on so much it seems to have become part of the audit culture. In English municipalities, certainly, “scrutiny” committees became all the rage (I'll try to put a paper about this on my website)
And the new Scottish Executive (and some other countries) have gone further and actually set up Ministries which focus on clients/problems/opportunities rather than the boundaries of intellectual disciplines and bureaucrats.

Most people now, however, would argue that the critique of professional expertise and assertion of the power of managers and politician has gone too far.
“Stakeholder analysis” at least makes sure that some legitimacy is given by policy-makers to the various voices which need to be heard by those in government. But this is not just an ad-hoc process. Governance Reform helps us explore the central challenge - which is how to devise structures which allow the voice of professionals and the citizen to be heard in the policy process. The role of politicians is arguably more that of a referee at the design stage and to signal when things are going wrong - and of the manager to make sure the implementation runs smoothly?

Lists

In one of my blogs I referred to the pleasures of the lists – the Seven Deadly Sins; Seven Habits of Effective People (Covey); Ten Commandments (God); and Ten rules for stifling innovation (Kanter) seem just about manageable. When I was working in Central Europe in the 1990s I used to buy multiple copies of the Covey book in the local language - Hungarian, Slovak and Romanian – since it was one of the few books I knew in English which was also available in the local language and was useful as a means of professional conversation. The principles were/are -
- be proactive
- begin with the end in mind
- put first things first
- think win/win
- seek first to understand : then to be understood
- synergise
- "sharpen the saw" - ie keep mentally and physically fit

When I moved to Central Asia and Caucasus in 1999, I found that presentation of Rosabeth Kanter’s Ten rules for stifling innovation was a marvellous way to liven up a workshop with middle-ranking officials. She had concocted this prescription as a satiric comment on the way she discovered from her research that senior executives in US commercial giants like IBM, General Motors were continuing to act in the old centralised ways despite changed structures and rhetoric.
1. regard any new idea from below with suspicion - because it's new, and it's from below
2. insist that people who need your approval to act first go through several other layers of management to get their signatures
3. Ask departments or individuals to challenge and criticise each other's proposals (That saves you the job of deciding : you just pick the survivor)
4. Express your criticisms freely - and withhold your praise (that keeps people on their toes). Let them know they can be fired at any time
5. Treat identification of problems as signs of failure, to discourage people from letting you know when something in their area is not working
6. Control everything carefully. Make sure people count anything that can be counted, frequently.
7. Make decisions to reorganise or change policies in secret, and spring them on people unexpectedly (that also keeps them on their toes)
8. Make sure that requests for information are fully justified, and make sure that it is not given to managers freely
9. Assign to lower-level managers, in the name of delegation and participation, responsibility for figuring out how to cut back, lay off, move around, or otherwise implement threatening decisions you have made. And get them to do it quickly.
10. And above all, never forget that you, the higher-ups, already know everything important about this business.

“Any of this strike you as similar?” I would cheekily ask my Uzbek and Azeri officials.
Robert Greene’s 24 ways to seduce; 33 ways to conduct war; and 48 Laws of power are, also, tongue in cheek. The first to hit the market was the 48 Laws of power and I enjoyed partly because it so thoroughly challenged in its spirit the gung-ho (and unrealistic) naivety of the preaching which characterised so many of the management books of the time – and partly for the way historical examples are woven into the text. I’ve selected a few to give the reader a sense of the spirit of the book
• Never put too much trust in friends; learn how to use enemies
• Conceal your intentions
• always say less than necessary
• Guard your reputation with your life
• Court attention at all costs
• Get others to do the work, but always take the credit
• Make other people come to you
• Win through your actions, never through argument
• Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victims

I found a Russian translation of the book in Baku and gave it as a leaving gift to the Azeri lawyer in the Presidential Office I had worked closely with for 2 years on the project to help implement the Civil Service Law. he obviouly made good use of it as 3 months later he was appointed as Head(Ministerial level)of the new Civil Service Agency my work had helped inspire!
Luther’s 95 theses on the wall of the Wittenberg church seem excessive – but, given the success of his mission, perhaps contain a lesson for the media advisers who tell us that the public can absorb a limited number of messages only!

The Bakewell book suggests that Montaigne’s life can usefully be encapsulated in 20 injunctions –
• Don’t worry about death
• Read a lot, forget most of it – and be slow-witted
• Survive love and loss
• Use little tricks
• Question everything
• Keep a private room behind the shop
• Be convivial; live with others
• Wake from the sleep of habit
• Do something no one has done before
• Do a good job – but not too good a job
• Reflect on everything; regret nothing
• Give up control

At the very least, when I see such lists, it suggests we're in for some fun!

making change stick

It will take some time to get through Governance Reforms under real world conditions – the World Bank E-book I mentioned yesterday. It apparently came out in 2008 – but presumably has only now been made available as an E-book. I spotted it on http://blogs.worldbank.org/publicsphere/
Up until now, the World has focussed on the WHAT of administrative change and rarely looked at the HOW. And, as we all know, the devil is in the detail. The reason? Its constitution forbids it from anything that smacks of politics and, as a result, its staff are predominantly US trained economists.
The “real world” phrase in the title is a real slap in the face to the economists who (patently) don’t live in the real world. Critical study of the World Bank has been a real cottage industry – I have about 10 books in my own library alone. Some years back there were several active campaigns to abolish it – initially because of the environmental damage and huge displacements of indigenous people its large-scale damming projects caused. “50 years is enough” was one of the slogans. Under Wolfensohn there was good intent but hubris. Wolfowitz’s brief tenure brought ridicule and his replacement, Zoellick, few hopes. But all has been quiet since then. This publication is, certainly, a good sign – of brains actually being applied with some decent results to an important issue.

The last 3 of the 6 questions it is written around are what we consultants deal with on a daily basis and are not normally what you expect to see the World Bank deal with -
- How do we build broad coalitions of influentials in favour of change? What do we do about powerful vested interests?
- How do we help reformers transform indifferent, or even hostile, public opinion into support for reform objectives?
- How do we instigate citizen demand for good governance and accountability to sustain governance reform?

I tried to address some of these questions in several of my own writings – and, a few years back, had got to the stage of suggesting what I called and “opportunistic” theory of change –
• “Windows of opportunity present themselves - from outside the organization, in crises, pressure from below
• But reformers have to be technically prepared, inspire confidence – and able to seize and direct the opportunity
• Others have to have a reason to follow
• the new ways of behaving have to be formalized in new structures

Laws, regulations and other policy tools will work if there are enough people who want them to succeed. And such people do exist. They can be found in Parliaments (even in tame and fixed parliaments, there are individual respected MPs impatient for reform); Ministries of Finance; have an interest in policy coherence; NGOs; Younger generation – particularly in academia, policy shops and the media
The question is how they can become a catalytic force for change – and what is the legitimate role in this of donors?”
The Paper is number 8 on website (just click publicadminreform in the list of links in the right hand column on this site

The paper by Matthew Andrews which starts part 2 of the book weaves a very good theory around 3 words – acceptance, authority and ability.

Is there acceptance of the need for change and reform?
• of the specific reform idea?
• of the monetary costs for reform?
• of the social costs for reformers?
• within the incentive fabric of the organization (not just with individuals)?

Is there authority:
• does legislation allow people to challenge the status quo and initiate reform?
• do formal organizational structures and rules allow reformers to do what is needed?
• do informal organizational norms allow reformers to do what needs to be done?

Is there ability: are there enough people, with appropriate skills,
• to conceptualize and implement the reform?
• is technology sufficient?
• are there appropriate information sources to help conceptualize, plan, implement, and institutionalize the reform?

A diagram shows that each of these plays a different role at the 4 stages of conceptualisation, initiation, transition and institutionalisation and that it is the space of overlapping circles that the opportunity for change occurs. “Reform space”, at the intersection of acceptance, authority, and ability, determines how much can be achieved. However the short para headed - Individual champions matter less than networks – was the one that hit nerves. The individual who connects nodes is the key to the network but is often not the one who has the technical idea or who is called the reform champion. His or her skill lies in the ability to bridge relational boundaries and to bring people together. Development is fostered in the presence of robust networks with skilled connectors acting at their heart.
My mind was taken back almost 30 years when, as the guy in charge of Strathclyde Region’s strategy to combat deprivation but using my academic role, I established what I called the urban change network and brought together once a month a diverse collection of officials and councillors of different councils in the West of Scotland, academics and NGO people to explore how we could extend our understanding of what we were dealing with – and how our policies might make more impact. It was, I think, the single most effective thing I ever did. I still have the tapes of some of the discussions – one, for example, led by Professor Lewis Gunn on issues of implementation!

Sad that the recent OECD paper which tried to look at the change process was so inadequate. I mentioned it on a previous blog -
In 1999 I devoted a chapter in my small book - In Transit; notes on good governance -to a summary of the various texts on managing change which was then such a fashionable subject. And one of the "key papers" on the website is a 63 page "Annotated bibliogaphy for change agents".

The 2 best things I have ever read on the subject are Robert Quinn's Deep Change; and Buchanan and Boddy's The Expertise of the Change Agent - public performance and backstage activity (Prentice Hall 1992)
Paul Bate's Strategies for cultural change (1994)is also a highly original and neglected book which presaged the recent fashion on that subject.
Useful summaries of the last 2 books can be found on pages 47-48 of the Annotated Bib I've just mentioned - I like in particular the 5x4 matrix I reproduced on styles of change he suggests.

the itinerants

A second post today - freezing fog (and light snow) has reduced visibility to 20 metres - and supplied the atmosphere to do a ot of reading, most of which I;ll summarise tomorrow.
One of the daily delights is selecting a picture to go with the blog – but it has an element of what the Germans call “Die Qual der Wahl” – the torture of choice! I am building up a stock of pictures I can draw on – and found that the Uzbek photo perfectly fitted the notion of philosophical discussions which comes later in today's earlier blog. But the first part of the blog is actually about a poem called Smuggler – so I surfed to find such a picture and was reminded of the great Russian school of painters who went by the name The Itinerants. I've supplied a link to the list on the right of the site.
I had to practice my first censorship just now - on an engraving by Albrecht Duerer no less! I wanted it to be the pic for today - but when I uploaded it and saw it, I knew that it just too risque! Instead, I've selected one of the Itinerants - Bogdanov-Belskiy - and his

Mental Arithmetic In the Public School of Rachinskiy

Quite superb! It's a much more powerful painting than the one I had to use in my recent posting of the report on the English primary school system.

I've uploaded two new papers to my website. One fits uneasily with all the jargon of the professional paper - it's 40 Tips for 2010 but fits nicely with the tenor of some of the recent postings. It's paper 9 and is more a New Year thing. But I thought of it since I determined yesterday to (a) read each day at least 2 of the hundreds of professional papers which I;ve downloaded but lie unread in folders and (b) skim at least one of the googlebooks which have been equally downloadedwith enthusiasm but then languished. There is no beating the sensuality of a book between your hands!
I also came across a little pamphlet I produced for a Conference the European Delegation in Kyrgyzstan asked me to attend in late 2006. I've included it because it's an example of the sort of policy analysis I like to write - which tries to find a pragmatic approach to issues in the local context. It was called Building LG in a hostile climate – it's paper 7

Zen Calvinism and Pyrronian scepticism

Still on yesterday’s poem, another pleasure is inspecting the latest books from Amazon – particularly here in Sirnea where their arrival is more of an event. The process starts with a shout from the post office to my neighbour who then phones me to announce the event. Yesterday was such a day – with 6 new books – one of which was a new collection of Norman MacCaig’s poems. His wry, humanistic observations on man and nature have always been a favourite. I thought I had already reproduced a very typical one - “Smuggler” – on this blog but can’t find it (in fact it was Oct 17but this will save the trouble of searching).

Smuggler
Watch him when he opens
His bulging words – justice
Fraternity, freedom, internationalism, peace,
peace, peace. Make it your custom
to pay no heed
to his frank look, his visa, his stamps
and signatures. Make it
your duty to spread out their contents
in a clear light

Nobody with such language
Has nothing to declare

There are many similarities with the poetry of Marin Sorescu who is my favourite Romanian poet. Both died about the same time in the early 1990s. MacCaig’s last Collection is in the (small) poetry section of my library here – this one (edited by his son) contains about 200 additional ones (some unpublished)
His voice was to be heard even in the Introduction – which recalls how he replied when asked about his religious beliefs – “Zen Calvinist!”
I had just been reading the chapter in the Montaigne book which explores the sort of philosophical scepticism which influenced him.

“Ordinary scepticism asserts the impossibility of knowledge; it is summed up in Socrates remark; “All I know is that I know nothing”. Pyrronian scepticism starts from this point but then adds, in effect, “and I’m not even sure of that”. Pyrronians deal with all the problems which life can throw at them by means of a single (Greek) word – epokhe – which means “I suspend judgement”.

MacCaig has some of the same spirit.

One of the World Bank publications I downloaded yesterday was an E-book of 500 pages - Governance Reforms under real world conditions – which looks very useful. It is organised around what it regards as six key challenges facing governance reform efforts:

1. How do we use political analysis to guide communication strategy in governance reform?2. How do we secure political will, which is demonstrated by broad leadership support for change? What are the best methods for reaching out to political leaders, policy makers, and legislators?3. How do we gain the support of public sector middle managers, who are often the strongest opponents of change, and then foster among them a stronger culture of public service?4. How do we build broad coalitions of influentials in favour of change? What do we do about powerful vested interests?5. How do we help reformers transform indifferent, or even hostile, public opinion into support for reform objectives?6. How do we instigate citizen demand for good governance and accountability to sustain governance reform?

I was amazed to find the following section in the introduction -

There is an iron triangle of stakeholders whose interests seem to converge mostly on business as usual - Economists in donor agencies, experts in consulting firms, and CEOs in large NGOs are well intentioned. But the natural inertia of modern large-scale organizations, together with residual affinities for the cult of expertise, threatens to halt progress toward people-centred development in its tracks.No doubt much of the threat, if one can call it that, lies in simply not knowing exactly what to do. Large-scale organizations need to change their best practices.

Academia has not been terribly attentive to this need, and those who control the spigot of funding are those whose thinking remains most determinedly technocratic.

Things are looking up at the World Bank! Read for yourself here

Easter lamb in Transylvania

It’s Easter Friday and, as I see the dawn come up over the hill, I can sense it’s going to be clear, bright day. I feel at the moment very much like the alter ego I have given this site (see Spitzweg’s painting at the right of the site - at the bottom of all the links etc).
For my part, I sit up in bed, fully clothed, a pile of books down on my left, a stove and candles in the room! Unlike "Der Arme Dichter", I a have scarf around the neck (not a hat), a carpet on the floor, paintings on the wall, a laptop on my lap and a secure ceiling!

Yesterday the old couple invited me to join them for an Easter meal – I heard the word “Miel” – and thought “interesting that honey should be part of the Easter celebrations”. Later I heard the word again when I went to another neighbour who makes and sells the most glorious Cascaval and Burdurf cheeses. OK, I thought, I’ll buy some honey. When I entered the basement room where they make and store the cheese, he proudly pointed to several carcases of lamb hanging from the ceiling!

Writing this has reminded me of an earlier blog in which I had recalled the impression an essay called “Dissertation upon roast pork” had made on me at school. Decades later I was sure (not without reason!) that its author was the inestimable Francis ....Bacon! When I tracked down the essay, it was to discover the author was Charles..... Lamb! Can create a good quiz or crossword question – “when is pork ...lamb?”!!
While on the subject of food, I drove to Brasov and Zarnesti yesterday on various errands – including general stocks; getting an anti-virus programme inserted on laptop; a haircut; and booking a test-drive of the new Dacia 4 wheel.
Amongst the purchases was my favourite bread – a huge Hungarian potato bread (cu kartoffel) brought in apparently from the Hungarian county. It lasts me at least 2 weeks (and costs just under 2 euros) As I groaned with its - and the 3 kilos round of cheese - weight up the hill and stored the cheese in the (ice-cold) spare room, 2 thoughts came into my head – first Brecht’s poem which celebrates the things wich gave him pleasure -

Pleasures
The first look out of the window in the morning
The old book found again
Enthusiastic faces
Snow, the change of seasons
The newspaper
The dog
Dialectics
Taking showers, swimming
Old music
Comfortable shoes
Taking things in
New music
Writing, planning
Travelling
Singing
Being friendly
Brecht (Last Poems 1953-1956) It's his pic above - not the usual one but if you look closely you will see he still has that large typical cigar!

OK – so it’s not really poetry – but it’s poetic! And it doesn’t refer to beer, bread or cheese. And what on earth does he mean by dialectics? The newspaper and planning and I would cut out – and include good bread and strong cheese; viewing favourite paintings; and walking in the hills with a breeze on the face (for one of the great Brecht poems see the Brecht and Candide blog entry of mid-October)

The second memory sparked was the old black and white French film “The 7 deadly sins”...The one which made the impact on me was the traveller in old France who was given shelter in a hovel by an old man and a younger wife. The place was so small the guest shared the marital bed – the camera focussed on the faces of the guest and the young woman – both lustful. Eventually the man could bear it no longer – he leapt over the woman; stretched up to the top of the cupboard and brought down .....a succulent round of cheese!

I’ve discovered and put on my links a Romanian photographer whose pictures do justice to the glorious landscape here – see Stunning Transylvanian landscapes on Links
http://www.panoramio.com/user/1063344/tags/judetul%20Brasov?photo_page=9

Finally, for this early Easter morning (the sky is cloudless as 07.00 pips on the radio), a good series of blogs and papers from a world bank site. Waisbord has a useful comment about how practitioners and academics rarely talk to one another and indeed talk a different language.
http://blogs.worldbank.org/publicsphere/talking-about-theory-and-practice
And I downloaded from the site some interesting papers on, for example, different models of Freedom of Information systems (including the Scottish). Another on social accountability mechanisms and their role in public sector reform.

The world's first blogger

Montaigne is a name which evokes France in the troubled 16th Century; a lone writer in a castle tower putting his thoughts about everyday life on paper , a count who had taken early retiral from life in public service. I had bought an Everyman’s edition of The Complete Works a year or so ago but only dipped into its 1,340 pages. I am now more encouraged since starting to read Sarah Bakewell’s How to Live – a life of Montaigne in one question and 20 attempts at an answer. It’s a superb edition by Chatto and Windus – with superb black and white engravings, paper, layout and typeface (sadly it doesn’t say which). It’s a long time since I’ve seen such a beautifully produced book. It’s also beautifully written – and all for 10 euros from Amazon.
I knew that he had retired young from a political life in Bordeaux in troubled times in France to look after his estate and muse about life in what became an exemplar for the memoir – and that he was inventing the template which people like Proust (and Pamuk in modern times) have made their own. But I hadn’t realised that he retired at age 37! So I feel better at this first attempt at musing in retirement at 67!
Now The Guardian has its obvious April Fool story – although the picture and first para did fool me! You must have a look at it!

This spell in the mountains helped me rediscover my energy so quickly that I had an interesting marketing idea – a retreat for shell-shocked mercenaries of technical assistance – not so much to help send them back into battle as to help redefine the enemy and nature of battle needed!
The experience has helped me reconnect with the critique I wrote 3-4 years ago – which was a mite too ambitious. It’s the paper on my website’s “key papers” – entitled critique of development assistance.

And let me direct you to another excellent piece in Scottish Review – one on how those who blow whistles are treated