How publishing works

Kamal Ahmed starts as thought-leader at BBC News on 1st November; meanwhile he's still busily promoting his autobiography "The Life and Times of A Very British Man". (I'm told that copies of the hardback in the network newsroom are rather over-fingered at p166, in which our protagonist recalls a discussion of manhood measurements with a colleague, in the hearing of many other colleagues.)

There's little in the book about the journey to print. Kamal was working at The Telegraph group when James Harding, heading to the BBC from unemployment at The Times, asked him to write a note on how the BBC's business coverage might be improved. Spookily, Kamal was successfully interviewed within months to succeed Robert Peston as Business Editor. In November 2015, Kamal was a guest at the stag-party of James Purnell, then BBC Director of Strategy, in a restaurant in Paris. In 2017, Kamal was given three-months off by James Harding to write his autobiography, to be published by Bloomsbury, where travailleth Mrs Purnell, Alexis Kirschbaum. This year Alexis signed Kate Weinberg (Mrs James Harding) to write a novel for Bloomsbury, now expected in August 2019.