I’ve now read Stephen Bayley’s part of Life’s a Pitch and as expected it is very different from his pal Rog’s.  You can see that just by quickly leafing through the book – Bayley’s half has long, dense paragraphs of long sentences, some of which need a second or third read, and long words, some of which need to be looked up.

There’s useful and thought-provoking stuff in here for homeworkers, such as making first impressions (which this blog has already proved to be a minefield), the perils of the business lunch, the nature of charisma and how to make an impact with a letter.  Unfortunately many readers might be put off digging through the verbiage to find them by Bayley’s obvious cleverness and numerous quotes and classical references.

The final section is an appendix of interviews with ‘our panel of experts’, historical figures whose actual or attributed words have been woven into a Q&A format.  I feel this bit could be dispensed with, but overall A and I are so impressed that we’ve bought a copy so we’ve always got it for reference, albeit the cheaper, smaller (blue) paperback.  The red book (Amazon link on previous post on the book) was published first in a large paperback format and has colour pics and lots of white space, which definitely add to the reading experience.  But it’s more expensive – you pays your money etc.