One of Macmillan's most loyal and most entertaining authors, Bill Deedes, died yesterday. For more about him just follow this link to today's vast number of news stories. Even better, sample one of his books the most recent of which has just come out in paperback with the author aged 94.

While being distracted by old issues of Macmillan News the other day this came up as the banner illustration.

Macmillan's former Chairman is pretty recognisable but I wonder how many people now recognise the other guy. I'm pretty sure that it's Clive Sinclair the British inventor. I think he's demonstrating one of his ZX Spectrum computers for use in schools back in the early 1980s. Clearly the digital revolution began early at Macmillan.

Two links for those interested in the future of educational publishing. University Publishing in a Digital Age is a report written by an old friend and former head of Oxford University Press USA, Laura Brown, principally about the university press sector in the America. It's a strange thing but, whilst British university presses are among the most successful and vibrant publishers in the world, their American equivalents by and large are tiny and very traditional. I think this is because the Britsh ones (OUP in particular) have been forced to stand on their own feet by virtue of the relative poverty of their owners. The American ones have traditionally received some form of support from their very wealthy owners. Subsidies don't work. Anyway, Laura's report is an excellent overview and it's well worth reading the conclusions and summaries if not the whole very long thing.

The second link is to a very basic and almost empty landing page for CourseSmart. The reason for mentioning it is that it is a very rare beast - an alliance of publishers working together to find solutions to the delivery of digital information to students. I wonder whether there should be similar initiatives elsewhere in the world...