About my writing

Writing and editing experience in the last few years includes:

• 2003
  Facilities Economics in the United Kingdom, 2nd Edition
  (IPFP, Bromley Kent (as Editor and Contributor)

• 2004
  The Glossary of Property Terms, 2nd Edition
  Estates Gazette, Reed Business Books, London
  (as Editor and Contributor)

• 2005
  EG Property Handbook
  Estates Gazette, Reed Business Books, London
  (as Author)

• 2006
  EG Council Tax Handbook
  Estates Gazette, Reed Business Books, London
  (as Author with Tim Rowcliffe Smith)

Current work includes:

• 2006-early 2007
  Town Planning at your Fingertips
  IPFP, Bromley Kent
  (Joint author with Professor Barry Redding)

• 2007
  Late Spring
  Rating and Local Taxation Handbook
  (Author with Tim Rowcliffe Smith)

• Autumn
  Property Information Handbook (Joint author with Jackie Hearn)

• Thereafter
  Other titles …14 or so other titles...being added to as and when!
  (Author or Joint author with other authors to be identified)

Early years - three firsts

First published work

Hardly work! It was a letter which (to my very great surprise) was published in the Fishguard Grammar School magazine.

First Editorships

A volunteer editorships of The Estatesman was a rewarding experience. Cut and paste were literally that – sticky and cut fingers – power to liquidate copy – meeting deadlines – chasing would be authors.

First Book

Chasing a would-be author (in fact he was already an author) by telephone (in those days) resulted in a refusal and an invitation. He could not write a piece for The Estatesman on estate duty but invited me (an unknown) to join him in rewriting Estate Duty and Property. Two years of weekend driving from Kent to Surrey followed.

The Estates Gazette published the second edition a month after death duties were reformed by the government. But I was an author, a real author – as my mentor Vincent Cole gave me an opportunity and a boost of inner confidence – I cannot express my thanks to him now – it was the first turning in my career as a writer.

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Middle years

Sporadic writings happened during the middle years. The White Paper Land resulted in a volume on Planning, Development and the Community Land Scheme and a huge wall hanging - Flow Chart through the Community Land Legislation.

Barry Redding and I did the book for the Rating and Valuation Association (now the IRRV) and we were joined by Jonathan Lucas and Bernard Williams for the chart which was published by the Building Economics Bureau (BEB) with Bernard (as a publisher). He has a recorded track of collecting good teams to produce books, charts, conferences, business games and directories – super-brilliant!

In 1977 an invitation to join the Salzburg Seminar in American Studies and spend a month talking about everything of interest:

• coastal zone management (in the USA)
• land policy (in the UK)
• new towns (in the Netherlands)
• development control (everywhere)

Years later I realised it was a second turning.

The 1980s was many years of defining property terms with a team at Jones Lang Wootton (now Jones Lang LaSalle) –the result was The Glossary of Property Terms (1989) with a second edition in 2004.

Opportunities offered and taken with appreciation to write articles and to present papers on kindred topics – usually property taxation!

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Later years

Editing and writing became a serious propensity for me in the 1990s – I worked on proofreading and then editing books for BEB – making editor’s contributions or full chapters – a continuation of contributory works on the BEB directories – The Directory of Property Developers, Investors and Financiers (Nine editions). Other books included:

• Facilities Economics in the United Kingdom
• Facilities Economics in the European Union
• Facilities Economics in Australia.

In-flight to India a dip into a self-help book on management (I need self-help books all the time) was a hit the page on business plans. I reached India with a writer’s business plan of about 20 titles.

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