Authors

The Lowdown: Business Etiquette - China

THE "MUST HAVE" TOP TIPS GUIDE TO DOING BUSINESS IN CHINA

FLORIAN LOLOUM

Florian has been a passionate student of Chinese language and culture for many years. After finishing his studies, he spent three years in Shanghai developing the Chinese market for several international companies.

He now lives in Hong Kong, where he works for Pan Macmillan as Business Development Manager for Asia.

The Lowdown: Business Etiquette - Russia

THE "MUST HAVE" TOP TIPS GUIDE TO DOING BUSINESS IN RUSSIA

VYACHESLAV (SLAVA) KATAMIDZE

Slava is the author of "Loyal Comrades, Ruthless Killers," the story of the Russian secret services. He has written 16 other publications, both in English and in Russian, and has written and directed several television documentaries. He is a graduate of the prestigious Military Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow. He served as a United Nations Military Observer in the Middle East in the 1970s, and later worked for a radio station as a reporter and news analyst, reporting from Kuwait and other Middle Eastern countries.

CHARLES MCCALL

Charles McCall is an old Russia hand, having first set foot in the USSR in 1972, during the "Cryogenic Era" of the Cold War and, allowing his curiosity to get the better of him, witnessed first-hand the demise of the Soviet Union and rise of the new Russia. He has established a wide range of contacts while acting as an advisor to both foreign and Russian governmental and private sector organizations wishing to do business with each other. With Russian partners he was a pioneer in establishing Soviet-American Joint Venture #14, plus the first foreign travel agency, foreign air services, a trading company and a successful advertising company, and even organized the Miss USSR Contest. He continues in this advisory capacity today.

The Lowdown:
Improve Your Speech - American English

Improve Your Speech - American English For Chinese Speakers

USEFUL TIPS TO HELP YOU ACHIEVE A MORE PROFESSIONAL LEVEL OF SPEECH

MARK CAVEN

MARK studied elocution and voice in England at the London Academy Of Music and Dramatic Arts. In a twenty-five year career he has worked successfully in film, television, theatre and radio, both as a performer and a writer.

Mark is the director of the Perfect English Speech program (www.perfectenglishspeech.com) and a popular guest lecturer at universities and language academies throughout North America. Mark is also highly in demand in the business arena, coaching many professionals in the art of public speaking.

The Lowdown: Improve Your Speech - British English

USEFUL TIPS TO HELP YOU ACHIEVE A MORE PROFESSIONAL LEVEL OF SPEECH

DAVID GWILLIM

David has been an actor for over thirty years. His numerous appearances include Prince Hal and Henry V for the BBC Shakespeare series. In 2002 he graduated from the Central School of Speech with an MA in Voice Studies. He has taught at RADA, the Royal Academy of Music, ALRA and is currently at City Lit.

David is also in demand as a private voice coach.

DEIRDRA MORRIS

Deirdra is an actress and writer. Her theatrical work includes several seasons at the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre, and she was co-founder of the Smock Alley Theatre Company in Ireland. She has taught both drama and English, and has written and directed for the stage.

Deirdra has published children's books, as well as other fiction.

The Lowdown: Business Etiquette - India

THE "MUST HAVE" TOP TIPS GUIDE TO DOING BUSINESS IN INDIA

MICHAEL BARNARD

Michael Barnard is the deputy chairman of an international publishing group.

After a career in newspaper and magazine journalism, he joined the Macmillan group and was appointed to the main board in 1979 and enjoyed wide-ranging responsibilities encompassing at various times publishing journals, new media and fiction, book production, distribution and logistics, IT services and human resources.

He has been chairman or director of several overseas companies in Asia and the Far East, including operations in China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore and his business experience in these regions extends over more than 30 years.

He has been Chairman of The Printing and Publishing Industries’ Research Association and a director of the Centre for Creative Business (London Business School). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspapermakers and a Fellow of the Institute of Printing, Paper and Publishing.

He was appointed a Visiting Professor at the University of the Arts London in 1988.

The Lowdown: Top Tips for CEOs

USEFUL TIPS TO HELP YOU CLIMB THE CORPORATE LADDER

RICHARD CHARKIN

RICHARD CHARKIN is Executive Director of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC. He is responsible for Bloomsbury’s publishing activities in UK, USA and Germany (through Berlin Verlag).

He is also a non-executive director of the Institute of Physics Publishing. He is a member of the Strategy Advisory Board of the British Library; a member of the Institute of English Studies Advisory Board; a member of the UK’s Literary Heritage Group; a Trustee and former Chairman of Common Purpose UK; Council member and former President of the Publishers Association; and Visiting Professor at the University of the Arts London. He was Chair of the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, Chair of the Society of Bookmen, Chairman of xrefer.com and a director of the Centre for Creative Business at the London Business School; and non-executive director of Melbourne University Publishing.

He has held senior positions at Macmillan (CEO worldwide), part of Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck (Director); Current Science Group (CEO); Reed Elsevier (CEO Reed International Books); and Oxford University Press (Managing Director Academic and General Divisions).

He has an MA in Natural Sciences from Trinity College, Cambridge; was a Supernumerary Fellow of Green College, Oxford; and attended the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School.

Macmillan has recently issued a print-on-demand book version of http://charkinblog.macmillan.com.

RICHARD PETTINGER

Richard Pettinger has taught at University College London since 1989, where he is a senior lecturer in management. He is the course director for the undergraduate Information Management for Business programme, which is especially concerned with ensuring that the next generation of CEOs, leaders, top and senior managers are entrepreneurial, expert and competitive.

He has worked in many different parts of the world including Poland, Canada, South Africa and Viet Nam. Richard is the HR consultant to the Cabrini Children's Society, working on all aspects of organisation development and staff management practice.

He is the author of over thirty books, including three books for the for ’Dummies’ series, and four books for Continuum, the leadership and management series published by Wiley Capstone.

The Lowdown: Blogging for Business

JAMES LONG

James Long has been a blogger both at work and at home: he has managed large corporate blogging projects, medium-sized business blogs, and a small personal blog. His background is in psychology and bookselling, and he's spent the last ten years working in publishing, software usability design and digital development.

At 32, he's too old to be a digital native so instead he immerses himself in the online lifestyle as much as possible as a dedicated digital tourist! He lives in London, where he works for Pan Macmillan as Head of Digital Development.

The Lowdown: A Simpler Life

Lucy McCarraher and Annabel Shaw are the creators of My Wonderful Life – Simple, Sensible, Scientifically Supported Self Help, which can be found online (www.mywonderfullifeselfhelp.com) and in the book to be published shortly.

ANNABEL SHAW

ANNABEL SHAW trained as a research psychologist and is the inventor of the Lifescape method of visualising a life history, which enables people to literally picture their whole life as a basis for analysing and changing it. The interview schedule was originally developed as a research tool for recording the lives of homeless women and her article on "The Experience of Homeless Women" was published in Housing Studies in 1995 and the methodology discussed in the Open University textbook, Social Science in Question, in 1998. The interview schedule has since been used by researchers working with and recording the lives of cared-for children both in Britain and abroad.

Annabel has taught psychology at Sussex University and at The Open University and she has also worked for Brighton and Hove Social Services, providing initial assessment and safe housing for runaway children brought to the attention of the police overnight. More recently Annabel, who is also a qualified radiotherapist, has worked with cancer patients at the Sussex Cancer Centre.

A photo of Lucy McCarraher, Author of The Lowdown: A Simpler Life

LUCY MCCARRAHER

Lucy is one of the UK’s leading experts on work-life balance. Her self-help The Book of Balanced Living was published in 2002, and she has written the Industrial Society’s Work Life Manual and Get the Balance Right, a video-based training package. She has been a consultant, trainer, speaker and coach in work-life balance and stress management.

Lucy’s expertise in Work-Life Balance grew out of research and writing about family, parenting and children’s issues for organisations such as the NSPCC, National Parenting Forum, Thomas Coram Foundation and Working Families. Before this she was part of the media team that produced the first self-help videos, including childcare with Penelope Leach and Desmond Morris on Babywatching

Lucy has been a script-writer, script-editor, magazine and publishing editor, journalist and tv presenter. She does voluntary work for intercountry adoption (her two daughters were adopted from Russia) and is a director of a sheltered accommodation charity.

The Lowdown: Pulling Power

ALISON NORRINGTON

ALISON NORRINGTON is a bestselling chick-lit novelist, author of Class Act, Look Before You Leap and Three of a Kind, and is the alter ego to 'Sophie Regan', who blogged about her quest to stay single for a year at www.sophie-stayingsingle.blogspot.com

The Lifestyle Lowdown: The Baby Juggler

SARA LLOYD

Sara Lloyd has two jobs. One as a Director in a medium sized publishing house, where she spends her time trying to imagine what a book might look like in a fully digitised world and then persuading people to embrace the necessary change to ensure reading and writing continue to be appreciated for a long time to come. This comes with its own challenges, but largely, she enjoys living her working life on the edge of a precipice – it makes it more exciting. Her other job, which might be called her ‘life’s work’, is as Mother to three children, Eden (8), Nathan (4) and Ava (3), (and occasionally, when she has a bit of spare time, as wife to husband Paul). This job she finds uniquely fulfilling, exciting, fun and joyous, but at the same time earth–shatteringly frustrating, exhausting and scary. Combining the two jobs, whilst finding a teensy–weensy space in between for herself and her other interests, is perhaps the trickiest part about Sara’s existence, and is what motivated Sara to start her blog, www.babyjuggler.blogspot.com, from whence the idea of this book came.

The Lowdown: A short history of the World Cup

MARK RYAN

Mark Ryan has been a sports journalist for 25 years, and has written at some stage for just about every national newspaper in Britain. Also a prolific author, he recently finished writing a biography of England's 2010 World Cup coach - "Fabio Capello, The Boss" (published by JR Books)

He regularly reports on the London based football matches for the Mail on Sunday newspaper.

Ryan's work in football has taken him on assignments worldwide, and that extensive travel has helped him to develop a truly international perspective on the game he loves most.

Mark Ryan’s experience in radio reporting made him the ideal presenter for the audio edition of this history of the World Cup - from its chaotic beginnings to the global phenomenon it has become today.

Now 48, Ryan lives in Berkshire, England, with his wife Victoria and son Luca.