Holidays always
provide a fantastic opportunity to catch-up on some of those books you’ve been
meaning to read for a while, or perhaps re-visiting, and on some occasions
coincide with the release of a new and interesting title. All three of these
applied to me as we set sail from Southampton for The Canary Islands on 17th
December.
Of the
five titles I read, although all very good indeed, the pick of the bunch for me
was London Mayor Boris Johnson’s reappraisal of the life and work of Winston
Churchill which has only recently been published.
Boris has
a real concern that perhaps the greatest Briton of all time is slowly fading
from people’s memories, with the insurance dog sadly being the first thing that
many people associate with when the name Churchill is mentioned nowadays. There
is also a strong sense that in the 50 years since Winston Churchill’s passing,
his reputation has been unfairly attacked and diminished by critics living in a
different time, and perhaps of a differing political hue.
Boris
doesn’t shrink from this, and tackles all of the situations cited as Churchill’s
errors of judgement and re-evaluates them in a balanced and fair way. In
several of these, he brings forward the reasons why they are not in fact the
failures that Churchill’s detractors like to suggest, and in some instances
were ideas and actions based in very sound logic. Throughout the book we also
get a smattering of many of the retorts that Winston was so famous for, which
is almost worth the admission price alone!
Although
the book covers Churchill’s entire life (although not chronologically), it cleverly
pivots around May 1940 when he finally became Prime Minister at Britain’s hour
of need, along with the vital fact that, but for this one man and his steadfast
resolve, Britain would more than likely have undertaken a deal with Nazi
Germany. Great Britain today (indeed Europe in its entirety) would be a very
different place indeed to the democracy and freedom that we enjoy if that had
happened (Hitler clearly never stuck to any previous agreements so why did the
rest of the coalition cabinet think it would be any different next time?).
Cometh the hour, cometh the man.
Frustratingly,
despite his substantial military experience (and valour) and his influential
political savvy, he was often thrown out of office, denounced by colleagues and
had his words of warning dismissed by others who thought they knew better when
history shows that they clearly didn’t.
In a
remarkable political career that spanned over 50 years, Winston Churchill was a
driving force for victory in both world wars (the tank was his idea and its
introduction was decisive in breaking the stalemate of the trench warfare). He
had been fired at on four continents, was an early British enthusiast for
aviation (taking to the air many times in those pioneering early days) and was
crucial to the beginning of the welfare state in the early 1900s; he gave
British workers the job centre, unemployment insurance and tea breaks.
Furthermore, he was instrumental in the foundation of Israel and the campaign
for a united Europe. Remarkably, he had more words published in his books than
Shakespeare and Dickens combined.
Boris has
written this book with passion, new research, re-evaluation and great reverence
to a remarkable man whom we all owe a great debt to. I highly recommend this
book and congratulate the Mayor of London for a job well done.
One book
that I re-visited over the holidays was ‘Coaching for Performance’ by Sir John
Whitmore. I first read this book over a decade ago as a precursor to the Executive
Coaching course I undertook with John Webster’s CEOs Office (and am still on
the National Coaching Register to this day). In fact one of the sessions on the
CEO’s Office course was actually taught to us by Sir John Whitmore himself and
it was absolutely amazing and inspiring. The book, as the title suggests, is
about the principles and practice of coaching and leadership; growing human
potential and purpose via the GROW model (Goal, Reality, Options, Way Forward).
This remains a great and inspirational read.
I followed
this up with a Richard Bandler NLP book (he was a co-creator of
neuro-linguistic programming), Fiona Campbell’s ‘Business Coaching the NLP Way’,
‘The Naked Leader Experience’ by David Taylor and Sir Terry Leahy’s ‘Management
In Ten Words’ (very interesting considering Tesco’s current woes).
Unfortunately, by the time I had got stuck in to the latest Jim Collins book, ‘Great
by Choice’, we were already sailing back in to Southampton – but it does assure
me of some great reading with which to start the New Year.
And with
that in mind, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very
happy, successful and prosperous 2015.
