The Society of Bookmen founded by Hugh Walpole (and I cannot find a decent link for you although a Google search reveals quite a lot about its members) had a dinner last night where the guest speaker was Michael Grade, Executive Chairman of the British commercial television company ITV. As a matter of fact, he has run nearly every bit of the British TV industry at one point or other. I am not allowed, under the Chatham House Rule, to reveal what he said but I can reveal that the evening was a sell-out, he left the audience wanting more, and now I have the tough task of finding the next speaker. It's very hard following Jessica Kingsley who has done such a brilliant job as Chair(man) of the Society. All suggestions welcome.

Working my way through some sales reports yesterday, I noticed that One Unknown by Gill Hicks was selling exceptionally well in Australia. I hadn't read the book. I now have and I recommend it to all of you.

This is the view from the Meridien Hotel Cairo where Macmillan Egypt held a training seminar for teachers of English yesterday. 900 people turned up, we catered for 300, the hotel ran out of food. The tribulations of success.

I have a new statistics package for this blog. This rather bad reproduction shows the weekly pattern with a huge spike this week. Yesterday was the highest day ever with 8406 visits. It seems that my visit to New York may have triggered this upsurge.