Author

This is not your typical bio – it’s not going to try to impress by listing a string of achievements. You can read that on LinkedIn. Rather, this is how and why I came to write Goodbye Trust.

In 1949 I was born into a working class family living in Walthamstow an East London borough. My schooling was typical of those times failing the 11+ and going to a secondary modern. I will come back to that.

School days were a happy time. Lots of football and not too much academic stuff.

Then came the awful prospect of getting a job! I rapidly jumped onto the exam escalator and got off ten years later with all the necessary qualifications, a degree and an MBA.

In the 1970s the computer industry was the place to be. I had a wonderful time working for some of the biggest companies, travelling the world and being paid for it.

Then I decided to make my fortune and start my own company. Forty years later it was still going. I hadn’t amassed the fortune but had done well enough and had lots of fun.

Along the way I discovered writing books was a good way to promote and expand my business.

The 1990s was the era of the internet. To help me become a ‘guru’ I wrote a book explaining how it was going to change the world. That opened the door to academia. I lectured at London Business School and Southampton University. Companies wanted to know how to exploit the web and I was there to tell them.

As the excitement of the dot.com world subsided I looked for the next challenge. Everybody knew the population was ageing but the government and businesses were doing nothing about it. I wrote three books on this subject and travelled the globe, consulting and lecturing. My personal website contains details of this period.

Just as I was getting into my stride along came retirement!
Where did the time go?

My job and lifestyle had enabled me to do lots of the things on my bucket list. Very briefly I considered adding skydiving, bungee jumping and running a marathon then thought better of it. Travelling the world seemed like a better idea, but then came Covid.

Instead, I decided to keep writing, not about business, but things that interested me.

My next two books were about very different subjects.

My teachers and headmaster were great. I owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

The media’s portrayal of secondary moderns is uniformly negative and nothing like my experiences. Many of my school mates had done very well–one had become an MP. I resolved to put the record straight.

In 2021 I published The Secondary Mod, which gives an unbiased account of the history and achievement of these schools. Read about the book here and maybe buy a copy.

Then came the Joy of Moaning – a guide to the exquisite art of moaning.

Moaning is no different from all the other things that make us feel good. In moderation it’s enjoyable and beneficial but taken to excess it can be dangerous. I find watching people moan a fascinating pastime. OK, maybe it’s a bit weird!

There have never been more things to complain about, more people anxious to join the moaning frenzy and more channels to express our displeasure.

Since we spend so much of our lives moaning why not do it like a professional? That’s what my next book was about, a moaning manual. Published in 2023, it also set me on the track to write Goodbye Trust.

A healthy and prosperous society needs efficient and trusted institutions – ours are busted. The West is witnessing plummeting levels of trust in academia, the media, politics, business, the justice system and the financial regulators.

Everybody has an explanation for what’s wrong. Most are superficial, and many are obsessed with the world becoming woke. My research shows that it’s much more complicated and far more disturbing. The levels of incompetence and deceit I discovered were astonishing.

I wrote Goodbye Trust in an essay style and based my conclusions on facts, not my prejudices. Despite the seriousness of its conclusions, it was fun to write.

My next book began when I found a box of letters, photographs and press cuttings from the Second World War. They brought back half-remembered stories of how profoundly my parents’ lives had been changed.

I realised how little I really knew about their past, not just during the war years, but also growing up in a victorious yet financially devastated Britain after the First World War.

Once I created a timeline of the period, I saw that there were fascinating stories to research and tell. That is how my next book, HMS Sikh, began.

The challenge was to draw on my parents’ experiences to bring to life some of the war’s most dramatic episodes. Why was HMS Sikh sunk? What was life like in an Italian prisoner-of-war camp? Why did my dad return to the UK? How did he become involved in mine disposal?

Writing the book was deeply rewarding, and I hope I have added something to the literature of the wartime years.

The troubled world of 2025–26 brought me back to Goodbye Trust. So much had changed since I wrote it, and I needed to understand why. The rise of AI as a tool for research and writing is probably the most important technical development I have witnessed. What better way to learn about its possibilities than to use it to document the political, technological and economic upheavals engulfing the world?

I anticipate that another book will be published in 2027, using AI to unravel some of the more challenging historical questions.

For a more conventional account of my career, visit LinkedIn.