Raymond Miquel

Business as Usual
Second Edition

In his thirty years at Arthur Bell & Sons, Professor Raymond Miquel CCMI, CBE transformed the traditional whisky distillers into one of the most successful companies in Scotland with the Bell's brand becoming a household name.

At the same time Bell's maintained a social responsibility for its workforce and local communities as well as an active policy in sport, personal development and welfare reflecting Miquel's own priorities and beliefs.

He makes no secret of his commitment to Scotland and his belief that local Scottish companies and workers can, given the leadership and direction, compete as equals with the best in the world.

The Bell's takeover of Canning Town Glass and its political implications is described along with the takeover of Gleneagles Hotel. The impact of the latter would have a significant baring on the ensuing battle Miquel had with Guinness.

Karen Cunningham tells of the intrigue and double standards throughout the Guinness bid and .the subsequent disappearance of one of Scotland's strongest independent companies.
After Bell's he looked for a new challenge with Bellhaven Brewery. After accomplishing so much in two short years Miquel was ousted before achieving his ambitious objectives.

Business as Usual
First Edition

Away from business matters the book covers his period in sports administration. As Chairman of the Scottish Sports Council he faced head on the difficulties of running a government quango.

His involvement with Lees of Scotland which he saved from administration in 1993 and floated on the Alternative Investment Market in 2005 is well documented, as is his continuing association with Glasgow University Business School.

REVIEWS click on link
Herald Scotland Review
Herald Scotland Review

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Available on the internet go to link  

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Raymond Miquel, Esq, CBE's Professional Career

Arthur Bell & Sons: joined 1956, md 1968-85, chm 1973-85; chm Wellington Importers Ltd USA 1984-85, Gleneagles Hotels plc 1984-85, chm and chief exec Belhaven plc 1986-88, dir Golf Fund plc 1989-94; chm and chief exec: Lees Foods plc 1992-2009, Lees of Scotland Ltd 1993-2009; visiting prof of business dept Univ of Glasgow 1984-; chm Scottish Sports Cncl 1987-91, govr Sports Aid Fndn; memb: Sport and Recreation Alliance 1981-, Sports Cncl 1988-91; CCMI 1981.

Isobel Bradley

Smiling in the Darkness

Listen to Isobel on Power Mag Radio on  7th February 2013

Isobel Bradley started writing with The Memoir Club in 2011. 

Isobel was first diagnosed with cervical cancer at the age of 28. Her only option was to have a radical hysterectomy. 

But a few years later, while training for the London Marathon, Isobel suffered pain in her groin and abdomen. Soon after a tumour was discovered in her appendix and surgeons had to remove her fallopian tube, remaining ovary and appendix.

After being given the all clear, ten years later she was told she had cancer again. Isobel had already had so much radiotherapy that any more would have caused too much tissue damage. Her only option was really radical surgery to remove her bowel and bladder.

Now over a decade later her past traumas have returned to haunt her. In this powerful story, Isobel's determination shines through as she succeeds in living her life to the full. We read about her journey, ranging from skiing to white water rafting incidents through to major life saving surgery.

Isobel supports a Cambodian orphanage and regularly visits the children there. She includes a chapter in the book and is also donating 10% of the proceeds to the orphanage. 

Launching the Race for Life

On 24th June 2012, Isobel Bradley launched and ran the 5 kilometer Race for Life at the Pitchcroft Racecourse in Worcester. In the Worcester News, she explains what the future may hold for her:

“I’ve been given a 50/50 chance of surviving for five years. That sounds terrible, but I just want to live my life to the full, however long it turns out to be. I feel well, and I’m determined not to let this colostomy bag stop me doing anything. My life has been so dramatic that I wanted to share my experiences. I want people to know that you can carry on and have a great and enjoyable life even when everything seems to be against you.”

Her husband, Mike Bradley also added:

"There have been some very difficult times but the most amazing thing about Isobel is the way she keeps bouncing back. She's an inspiration and I am so proud of her for taking part in Race for Life."

REVIEWS

Worcester News

Worcester Standard

Cancer Advice UK

Price £8.99  P & P £2.50 UK   £4.50 Europe £7.50  ROW
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Professor John Walker-Smith

Enduring Memories 
Second Edition

Prof Walker-Smith had this to say:

“The General Medical Council hearing was the longest ever held and I spent more time giving evidence than any doctor ever has.

“I felt I had the mark of Cain on my head. It was an utterly terrible time for me and my family.

“The hearing was Kafkaesque, and I have called the new chapter ‘The Trial’ because it felt like I was in that nightmarish world for much of the time.”

Professor Walker-Smith published his first edition in 2003.

Enduring Memories
First Edition

Professor Walker-Smith has become well known on the internet and in the press because of his involvement in a GMC Hearing (2007-2010), where he and his colleagues, Dr. Andrew Wakefield, and Professor Simon Murch faced charges concerning a paper in the Lancet published in 1998. This article described the clinico-pathological features of a group of 12 children with features suggesting autism who also had bowel problems, significant enough to be investigated by means of colonoscopy for possible bowel inflammation. The paper also speculated that there was an environmental trigger to this syndrome, which could have been measles mumps rubella immunization, MMR. He was accused of performing research on these children rather than clinical care in a tertiary referral unit. The GMC Panel in May 2010 determined that he was performing research on the 12 children and recommended he be struck off. However in February 2012 Mr. Justice Mitting in the High Court quashed the GMC findings. This was a triumphant vindication for Professor Walker-Smith. This has proved to have been an historic judgement as Mr. Justice Mitting stated “it would be most unfortunate if this were to happen again”. Subsequently the GMC has proposed a new tribunal conducted by a judge, some have seen this as the biggest change in 150 years.

Professor Walker-Smith describes his personal experience over an eight year period after the allegations were made against him, by a journalist, and the GMC Hearing itself as well as his successful appeal, in a Chapter entitled the Trial. He draws attention to a number of parallels with Franz Kafka’s The Trial.

However this book is much more than this. It gives a detailed account of academic and hospital specialist medical practice (paediatric gastroenterology) from the inside, for a period over 40 years. Professor Walker-Smith was both an academic and a consultant working in the NHS from 1973-2000.

  

Professor Walker-Smith
and his book

It also gives an account of his earlier personal and professional life growing up in Sydney, Australia. This covers the period from 1936-1972 when he transferred to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London.

His book launch was at The Village Bookshop in Woodford Green on the 6th October 2012 at 5 p.m. The launch was a success. View the link below to find out more.

Information on the Trial
Book Launch Details

REVIEW

John Stone Review
James Lefanu Review

Price £9.95  P & P £2.50 UK   £3.75 Europe £9.50  ROW

Available on   http://www.thememoirclub.co.uk/   email: memoirclub@msn.com   or tel 01913735660 with card details and address

Norinka Ford

The Flowing Line now avaiable in eBook format: 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=the+flowing+line+norinka+ford

Norinka Ford lives in Brazil.

Norinka captures the fascinating story of her family from Hungary, a story moulded and shaped by the history of the twentieth century. The reader is transported back to the dark days of World War II.  

Norinka was able to travel extensively as a consequence of her father's diplomatic career and as a result we are given tantalizing glimpses of the various countries that she has lived in, countries as diverse as Iraq, Syria, Chile, Norway, India, and Brazil. 

This book is a unique family history. 

REVIEWS

The Flowing Line. Many, many congratulations Norinka. I thought it was absolutely wonderful. I am astounded at the amount of research that you must have done, and indeed at the excellence of the memories of some of the older relatives that you must have interviewed. The book combines very successfully so  many different aspects - family history and events, a near travel book, a political and social commentary on many places, a poetry anthology, and a near global survey of art and architecture, with many shrewd and perceptive comments. I thought we knew you both well and therefore that we knew the main features of your lives, but the book brought out all sorts of things of which I was only partly aware (eg the extent of your Father's diplomatic career) or of which I knew nothing (e.g. the eminence of your family in Hungary). And all so very well written. It is not at all a superficial book: it is a very solid read, and a very rewarding one. I do hope you have sold lots of copies. It is a book that deserves great success.

Sir Peter Heap

The Flowing Line is not only an absorbing family history but an evocative journey through diverse lands and different eras. The place and moment I most identify with is Syria at the start of the 1950s when, though neither of us knew it, Norinka Ford and I were both little girls within the small diplomatic community of Damascus. The magic of that ancient city has remained to this day in both of us.

Josceline Dimbleby, Author

Norinka’s work is unique in two respects. Not only does it straddle two such seismic world events across two different centuries, but it also unites them with real people’s lives. These stories deserve to be told, as they are in this book. If they are not, they will be lost. 

 Tom Newton Dunn, Award-Winning Journalist, The Sun

Norinka Ford has written a beautiful and moving account of her family's dramatic history and of her own action-packed life. Weaving together her families' memories with her own, she describes with great narrative skill their stories throughout the tumultuous events of the twentieth century, as well as telling of their new lives in a vividly and lovingly described Brazil. This book will be a precious and inspiring record. 

Liz Calder, Publisher

I have been so much enjoying reading some of your book over the weekend and really enjoying it.  You have done so much research and combined with your own memories and own experiences of fascinating countries and cultures, it is truly a beautiful book.  You have a lovely eye for detail and your chapter about Kilgraston which I have just skimmed through is most perceptive and sympathetic.  I also love your very varied poetry quotations.

 Kigraston School

Norinka Ford with her book

Norinka Ford's book launch took place at the English Speaking Union, London on Monday 8th October at 6:30 p.m. 

The launch was a great success and lots of people attended.

Norinka thanked The Memoir Club for the help that we gave her: 

I would like to thank Lynn Davidson of The Memoir Club for helping me make a long-held dream – to write a book – come true.

Writing a book can be a lonely business but I have been fortunate in having an outstanding editor, Dr Jennifer Soutter, to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude. She has so wisely led a novice like me by the hand and with patience and encouragement guided me through the long journey as this book took shape and developed into something far larger and more ambitious than I had originally envisaged. It has been a great pleasure and a privilege to work with her.

Price £14.95  P & P £4.00 UK   £7.00 Europe £12.00  ROW

Available on   http://www.thememoirclub.co.uk/   email: memoirclub@msn.com   or tel 01913735660 with card details and address

Brian Greenwood's SHOP! Is now reduced!

Reduced from £18.95 to £12.50! Order your copies now! Signed copies available until the end of September.

Brian Greenwood’s, experiences in building what was once Britain’s largest privately-owned menswear chain coupled with 50 years involvement in independent education, together with a very wide range of sporting interests, all make for entertaining, informative and frequently amusing reading. This profusely illustrated book with its foreword by Lord Norman Tebbit CH ranges from the origins of the Greenwood menswear empire, through the acquisition of other firms such as Dunn & Co. and Hodges - once a household name throughout South Wales and the south west - to a succession of commercial disasters in the period of the early 90s recession. Parallel to the business story are the affairs of one of the North’s leading independent schools - Woodhouse Grove and tales of sporting activities as diverse as athletics, rugby and hunting in South Africa. In writing his memoirs of a long and interesting life, the author sets out to produce a book which would never be dull but would rather be a thoroughly enjoyable read - he has succeeded!

‘The rise of the Greenwood family fortunes began in Bradford in the 1850’s when Brian Greenwood’s great-great-grandfather took up the trade of hatter, which was carried on by his son and then grandson, who expanded the business into a gentlemen's outfitters. Shop! traces the fortunes and misfortunes of his descendents - most notably Brian Greenwood himself - through a hundred and fifty tumultuous years including two terrible wars, the devastating slump and depression of the inter- war period, the height and the fall of the British Empire and that of the Greenwood empire too’.

The story has in it the stuff of a TV saga.’

Rt Hon Lord Tebbit CH

An enthusiastic tale about his experiences, wittily and fondly recalling characters and incidents down the years. His relish for life shines through. 

Chris Holland - Telegraph & Argus

What Our Authors Say About Us

Sir Nicholas Bayne Economic Diplomat

The production by The Memoir Club is exemplary and a rich selection of photographs aid greatly in

relating to the characters whose life this account details

Andrew Stewart from the Defence Studies Department at Kings College London

You have worked wonders. Keeping up with your speed is quite a challenge, Yet another very satisfied customer.

Brian Wilson

Educated in Northern Ireland and England, Brian Wilson became a scholar of Christ’s College, Cambridge and a lover of Classical and English literature, choosing not to follow his parents, both consultant surgeons, into medicine, nor his archbishop grandfather into Holy Orders, though theology has been a lifelong interest. Instead he became a schoolmaster, teaching in some of the country’s leading independent schools (Radley, King’s Canterbury, and Eastbourne College) before becoming Headmaster of Campbell College, Belfast, during a challenging period of educational as well as civil disturbance, and then deputy head of St Mary’s, Wantage, a leading girls’ boarding public school.  He has been an ‘A’ Level Chief Examiner in Latin and Ancient History,  a local councillor, an author and translator who has lectured for Swan Hellenic on their Mediterranean cruises, and for twenty years a religious broadcaster for the BBC. He also served for a time on the Central Religious Advisory Committee of the BBC/ITV.

Brian Wilson, Experience Is An Arch

 

Olga Abrahams

OLGA ABRAHAMS

A Geordie In Japan

Olga Abrahams appears on Premier Christian Radio on September 2nd.

'This book is the life story of an intelligent young Geordie from socialist home, the story of a most unlikely missionary candidate who eventually spent a life time of service in japan - I love the personal and intimate detail and honesty in this book and commend it to those who read this review, as a good read, written for the glory of god, but then, Doug and Olga Abrahams are two of our dearest fellow workers and friends.'

 - Denis Lane Evangelical news

'A Geordie in Japan will resonate with anyone who has ever been enchanted by other cultures or has found themselves looking at their own from a fresh perspective. It is a moving account of cultural and spiritual discovery that will delight and inform in equal measure.



-Freelance Market News

'God moves in mysterious ways, so it is said, and so it proved for North east woman and communist Olga Rutherford Abrahams. At first a confirmed non-believer, her conversion saw her spend 30 years in post-second world war Japan doing missionary work with her husband, Doug.'



-Mike Kelly Evening Chronicle

THE BAPTIST TIMES - A GEORDIE IN JAPAN  

A Tsunami, an Earthquake and a Nuclear Disaster in 2011 threatened catastrophe on a scale Japan has not seen since the end of World War 2. This is the back-drop, to which Olga Abrahams, a former communist and atheist from Newcastle upon Tyne releases her recent autobiography, 'A Geordie in Japan'

The opening chapters cover her phenomenal journey from her early days living in a mining village in the North East of England, following the death of her father, to her graduation as one of the first women to be awarded a degree from Cambridge University.  

This triumph over adversity would be enough to make for a good read in itself but as a paid-up member of the communist party and staunch atheist, it would be the next part of her story which would prove to be the most transformative. 

Converting to Christianity, Olga became a missionary to Japan and learned fluent Japanese in the aftermath of World War 2.  Then, as now, people asked:

 'How can you as a Woman of Science believe in God?' and 'How can you see God’s work through all of this suffering?'

Her measured and subtly emotive book answers these and other tough questions as she takes us on a journey through her remarkable life.  From surviving a crash landing on a flight in North America, to losing her first child and raising another three whilst working for 30 years as a missionary in Asia decades before the days of mobile phones and the internet. 

Olga’s story is a fascinating look at issues, which are as relevant today as they were then. Through personal anecdotes and wider philosophical consideration she unites the juxtaposed settings of her childhood and adult life.  

Motorbike crashes, finding love, swimming in the sea and captaining the Cambridge Hockey team during a resounding victory over Oxford in her youth give way to contemplative moments of reflection which grip the reader with incredible emotional resonance.  The passage in which she quotes verbatim from a letter sent to her by her aging mother (which Olga received overseas only after hearing news of her mother’s death) is a raw and honest example of what a great autobiography can be. 

At a time when religion is publicly derided, when Japan finds itself once again emerging from crisis and when government cuts are hitting areas like Newcastle the hardest, A Geordie in Japan is the poignant, entertaining and heartfelt story of an inspirational woman who has given her life to others in the name of her faith.

The Baptist Times