The traffic around our London offices in Kings Cross has been disrupted for a couple of years by the reconstruction of St Pancras station. This article in today's Observer tells how the new Euroterminal will open for business on November 14 this year. It's well worth clicking through to a wonderful slideshow of the development. When complete I think London will have one of the great stations of the world, not to mention making Macmillan the equal most convenient publisher (along with Hachette Livre UK) for the European mainland.

Also in the paper is a piece by Rachel Cooke on the strategy of the retail chain, Waterstone's. She reminded me of last year's battle to block the takeover of Ottakars:

'When writers and publishers opposed HMV's proposed takeover of Ottokar's on the grounds that it would lead to fewer titles being available on the high street, not even the biggest pessimists among them can have thought it would come to this so quickly; the £63m bid, which resulted in the combined group's taking a 24 per cent share of the market in books, only took place last May.'

Actually, I believe that the new strategy of improving the supply chain, selling off unprofitable stores and applying modern management techniques to bookselling is the right one. What I question is whether apparently moving the stock and brand profile closer to that of W.H.Smith can be the right thing to do.

I'm off to Rome tomorrow staying in the Piazza Nicosia, close to the Vatican in case we get an urgent call to meet the Pope.

I am there to meet once again Father Frank Moloney who you can read about here. More on all that later.

Today, in Britain at least, is Mother's Day and you could do worse than check out The Bad Mothers Club as antidote to the pink ribbons and cheap flowers - oh and incidentally get a copy of Stephanie Calman's Confessions of a Bad Mother from your local independent bookseller.

My comments yesterday on the demise of BBC Jam have stirred up a hornets' nest of firmly-held opinions and a bit of rancour too. I suppose that's the point of a debate and the point of feedback. This blog is particularly pertinent. A couple of additional points about the issue.

Macmillan is described by one commenter as a 'profit-chasing shareholder-saddled commercial monster'. This is rubbish, not least because we do not publish for the UK education market and therefore have no profit to chase by the elimination of BBC Jam from the market. And we are not a public company and therefore not shareholder-saddled. Sorry to disappoint some prejudices.

Second, one of the commenters rightly points out that UK publishers have benefitted from ELCs (electronic learning credits) funded by the Government. I would argue strongly that stimulation of a market place by encouraging new entrants is very different from funding a producer to achieve a potential monopolistic position in that market place.

This debate will run and run. The important thing to my mind is that publishers grasp this opportunity to invest more in developing and marketing excellent educational resources for schoolchildren. I am sure they will.

One of the best independent bookseller sites is Crow on the Hill. They have asked me to mention Shaggy Blog Stories which I am assured is very funny. It's great that it is supporting Comic Relief but the bit that impressed me the most is that they produced the book in seven days from start to finish. And not a bad cover either.

Finally for the warehouse lovers among my readers here's the latest picture of the Mexican warehouse as it develops. The racking might well be displayed as contemporary sculpture at Tate Modern.

Good news for British educational publishers. The BBC has decided to suspend its subsidised entry into on-line educational publishing, BBC Jam, under pressure from the European Union. It's good news because an organisation like the BBC is able to discourage new entrants by its very (and not-for-profit) presence just at the point when the market shows signs of taking off. Britain leads the world in e-learning and this can become a significant export market apart from its benefits within the UK provided the publishing is driven by competition and student and teacher satisfaction. The volte face has been achieved by a very long period of argumentation by a number of groups but I want to highlight the role of the the Educational Publishers Council of the Publishers Association. There are some publishers who resent coughing up their annual subscription and some are not members on the 'what's in it for me?' grounds. This ought to be a reminder to everyone of the value of having a committed and professional trade association battling for all of us when it really counts.

Yesterday morning I was in Oxfordshire with a group of Macmillan managers trying to plot our strategic path in various markets and in various formats. We ran three case studies and the aim was to ensure that managers only reviewed a case outside their normal job. It was extremely revealing and the results will show in the not too far future. Here is idyllic Sandford-on-Thames.

Next stop was rather less idyllic - Elephant and Castle in South London.

I was there for the Publishing Innovation conference organised by the MA students of the London College of Communications. I was on a panel with some very distinguished book and magazine publishers, the head of non-fiction for BBC Radio and an old friend and literary agent. The theme was that consolidation of publishing leads to focus on bestsellers at the expense of innovation or new writing - and an undertone that small is beautiful, bigger is bad, 'conglomerates' stifle 'independents' and so on. I think it's all pretty straightforward stuff but it can certainly generate a lot of disagreement and there were some forceful views aired. I disagreed with much of what was said ('sales people should not be allowed any input into publishing decisions'; 'the Richard and Judy Show is a wholly malevolent influence', for instance) but one of the speakers reminded us all how lucky we are to be able to have open debate (she had just returned from China). And this is an opportunity to remind one of the panellists that it's about time he joined the PA if he really wants the publishing industry (and his company in particular) to prosper.

Macmillan runs a graduate recruitment scheme and has done for more than thirty years. We are the only publisher in Britain (and maybe in the world) to have consistently and systematically tried to bring into the industry high-calibre people without a specific job vacancy. It has been a great success within Macmillan (five of our current crop of managing directors are from the scheme and 25 are not - it is not the sole qualification) and within the industry (two of the top six British publishers are run by ex-Macmillan graduate recruits and they occupy many other top slots).

I have just interviewed six of this year's applicants and I'm confident that the traditon of excellence will continue. The industry continues to be attractive for the best and the brightest but we need to maintain that by being and being seen to be innovative and relevant. Sometimes that is a bit of a challenge.

The new head of the HMV Group (which owns Waterstone's), Simon Fox, has had to open his tenure with a profits warning and announcement of a significant number of store closures as described here. I'm sure that there are cost savings to be made in the book supply chain and we are going to work with the new team to find and implement them. Right now a book is handled around twenty times between printer and purchaser and every handling costs money and introduces the chance of error. While we're doing that (which inevitably involves introspection) it's vital that Waterstone's (along with all other retailers) don't forget to look outwards at their customer base and its expectations. I do hope 'more emphasis on novels, cookery and children's books and less on "academic and humanities" areas' doesn't mean what I think it means - further homogenisation of the bookshop experience. Mind you, if it does, then independent booksellers should be able to benefit from filling the gap.

A few weeks ago I wrote about one of the earliest author tours (Kipling in Melbourne in 1891). This morning I was sent evidence of one of the most recent - Julia Donaldson in the Children's Bookshop in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Here she is in the overflowing shop conducting the children in the Gruffalo Song and you can hear it here courtesy of Radio New Zealand. Some authors go to a long way to reach their readers and we go a long way to support them. If you weren't in Christchurch at the time you can find 112 titles by Julia on Macmillan Children's Books website.

Whenever I think of New Zealand, rugby comes to mind. I was slightly shocked to see in the email about Julia that they don't rate England's chances in the forthcoming World Cup (incidentally this is a link to the unofficial site, the official site isn't working). They are probably right but the discovery of four world-class newcomers on Saturday when England beat France at least gives us hope. But the more miraculous rugby development is the emergence of Italy as a serious competitor. Italy today, Netherlands tomorrow, Germany soon after and then the big one, Russia. I'd love to attend the first Russia-New Zealand test match.

The last architectural monument on my route to work is not very beautiful, decidedly impractical but strange enough to catch the eye - a lighthouse on Pentonville Road. London's a strange old city.

One of the joys of living in England is BBC Radio 4 where you can tune in at almost any time and hear something of interest, irritation, novelty or fun. I heard for the first time yesterday Robert Conquest's brilliant compression of Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man. His goes:

First you get puking and mewling
Then very p—ed off with your schooling
Then f—s and then fights
Then judging chaps’ rights
Then sitting in slippers–then drooling.

This article in the Independent reports on analysis of a survey undertaken by Kevin Killeen, co-author with Peter Forshaw of the Word and the World.

To summarise, the survey of a thousand people (in Britain, I assume) found which books were most owned and least finished.

In fiction the winners are:Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre; Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling; Ulysses by James Joyce; Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres; Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell.

In non-fiction:The Blunkett Tapes; My Life by Bill Clinton; Beckham by guess who; Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss; Wild Swans by Jung Chang.

I have sympathy with the non-finishing readers. I have a house full of unfinished books. However, I think the survey is flawed. Best sellers are bound to lead the way. These books probably also have the largest number of finishers.

My suspicion is that the total number of books purchased and never finished is enormous and may well represent more than 100% of the total profits from publishing rather like Colman's Mustard whose business model is based on what is left on the plate.

My architectural route to work is nearly complete when I pass the strangely decrepit-looking but beautiful St Pancras Parish Church and its caryatid porch.

Finally, I am grateful to Clive Keeble for pointing out this excellent article on digitisation of archives from the New York Times and his contention (correct in my view) that digitisation is not a complete alternative to hard copy preservation.

There's nothing like an intellectual spat to liven up a Sunday morning. Later this week we are publishing Lloyd George and Churchill by the Cambridge historian Richard Toye.

During the course of his research for the book he discovered a previously unpublished 1937 document by the soon-to-be British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The document can be interpreted as suggesting that he was less sympathetic to the Jewish predicament than future events would have suggested. In any event the world's most famous Churchill scholar, Martin Gilbert, has come out fighting on behalf of Churchill and the press are having fun - The Observer, The Independent and The Times have all run stories and I'm sure there's more to come. Google News has already found 31 stories. Of course, if you want the really definitive biography of Churchill there is nothing better than Roy Jenkins's Churchill which is underpriced at £9.99 for a 1000-page paperback!

Whilst on the political theme, I attended a launch on Friday at the German Information Centre in London of Palgrave Studies in European Politics Series. The drinks and speeches were preceded by a day-long seminar on current and future agendas for the European Union. I must confess that I'd rather the EU had no agenda but that's clearly a personal and narrow-minded view. What is much more important is that we publish freely and participate in the debate. If you click here you'll be able to see Palgrave Macmillan's voluminous politics catalogue and get some idea of the contribution we are making. This is publishing of the highest importance.