Tim Waterstone
Auteur van Lilley & Chase
Werken van Tim Waterstone
Gerelateerde werken
Tagged
Algemene kennis
- Geslacht
- male
- Relaties
- Alison, Rosie (wife)
Leden
Besprekingen
Lijsten
Statistieken
- Werken
- 6
- Ook door
- 1
- Leden
- 67
- Populariteit
- #256,179
- Waardering
- 3.8
- Besprekingen
- 3
- ISBNs
- 23
- Talen
- 1
About half the book, more than readers will probably expect from the book's tile, is about Tim Waterstone's childhood and education. He was the youngest of three children in an upper middle class family who settled in Sussex when he was 3. He had a very troubled relationship with his angry, abusive father and difficult experiences in his boarding school education from the young age of 6, including an abusive headmaster at his first prep school. His mother's life and that of the family was apparently shaped by her feeling that wherever her husband's employment and wartime military service took him, she needed to live nearby to be a fully supportive wife. His older sister Wendy was lovely, his brother David rather more troubled. He also writes about various members of his extended family. All of these had died some time before he wrote about them here.
After school and Cambridge University, Tim Waterstone took up a chance through a family friend to work in a tea company in India for a few years, where he married for the first time, then joined a graduate training programme with Allied Breweries before moving to WH Smith. His adult life between the early 1960s and 1981, when WH Smith fired him after an unsuccessful attempt to expand the business abroad is quickly skimmed through in a few pages, so the Waterstones years are only about 40% of the book, 117 pages, describing raising funds, establishing policies, recruiting staff, various innovations, Waterstones being taken over by WH Smiths, then becoming an independent chain again.
The book concludes with a couple of short stories (but probably more factual than fiction) separated from the book - as if he felt these stories needed to be told but couldn't fit them into the narrative.
I was a little disappointed by this book. I found Waterstone's writing style a little clunky and sometimes the chatty, anecdotal musings are a bit frustrating. It is quite a quick easy read if reading for pleasure though, and I think the actual business chapters of the story might be useful for someone looking for a few real life case studies for a business studies type course, alongside textbooks and coursework.… (meer)