News
WHAT'S NEW FROM BANK HOUSE
As always, there's a lot going on around here, which is why you haven't heard much from me lately, but I'm under orders to keep you informed, so check in a bit more regularly in future and I'll try not to disappoint you.
The biggest news since my last update is that we are now Bank House Media Limited, with four Principals. My long-time collaborator, Andrew Chalmers is second biggest shareholder in the new company but the main man when it comes to keeping the thing together and expanding. When all us creative types run amok, it is Andrew who puts us back on the straight and narrow.
I wouldn't want you to get from that that he is a humourless cove - anything but. As well as founding and building a hugely successful software company and being very careful with the pennies, he also does no little damage to the pounds (his not ours) in the cause of his passion for motor racing, and always taps his calculator to the Motown beat.
Simon Fletcher joins us after many years as a senior commissioning editor at the late, lamented Sutton Publishing. With him comes great expertise and a faultless reputation that will help our heritage and history side expand into a serious force to be reckoned with. Simon is also a lover of good music and just as happy working with our music catalogue.
Sharon Davis needs no introduction. Doyenne of soul music authors and first call for TV and radio producers, Sharon has been rubbing shoulders with the cream of the music biz since she ran the Tamla Motown Appreciation Society back when even we were young. She is known throughout the music world for her journalism in the likes of Blues and Soul. Her books on Marvin, Stevie, Lionel Ritchie and Dusty are among those that feature regularly on Amazon's best seller lists. We at BHB are thrilled and delighted that she has decided to bring her unique knowledge and unparalleled reputation to work for us.
Our compilation of some of Sharon's classic interviews - Chinwaggin' - is now available to order through Amazon and all good bookshops. more
One of the interviewees in that book was Leee John, once front man of eighties glam band, Imagination, and now a respected singer in his own right. Leee has always given something back during his career and has been involved in recent times with SOS Children's Villages. A documentary team followed his visit to one of the villages in South Africa, but Leee wanted to make his own photographic record of the people, the spirit and the creativity he met with there.
His book, From Within The Heart, is our first full colour project and is now on sale, with the proceeds going to this worthy and vital charity. more
Another man who takes the responsibilities of success seriously is Peter Dawe, founder of both a mammoth internet supplier and a homeless charity, among his many accomplishments. His achievements have already earned him an OBE, and he has now turned his prodigious abilities toward some solutions to the climate change many feel threatens us at this moment in history. His book is out now, I'm delighted to say, so we can start making preparations for the future.
Read more about The New Noah here
Meanwhile, back in the past, some men have not always treated other men in the best possible way. The gradual progress from slavery to the dignity of labour is chronicled in a clear and entertaining way by Henry T Bradford in his new Bank House title: Slaves, Serfs and Wage-Slavery. Set in London's docklands shortly after World War II, it provides the perfect potted history of the battle for rights and equality and reminds us of some lessons learned that can too easily be forgotten.
A Life Drawing is a delightful book - a life story told with wry humour and illustrated by its author throughout. Geoff Jones found himself the inheritor of a family farm that had gone to make room for a motorway. He took the hint and decided to pursue another line of business. Feeling himself unfitted to any particular form of endeavour, he had all the options in the world, so decided to make a living as an artist - something many trained to the profession signally fail to do. Geoff was hampered by no such academic baggage and went on to make a more than modest success of his new career, drawing strips for some of the most renowned comics, storyboarding major ad campaigns and selling his evocative paintings to celebrities and sporting institutions. His book should be available in the next week or so (end July 08)
Bank House Media Ltd