Graham Cleverley

Graham Cleverley (1933- ) wrote three trail-blazing books in the 1970s in different fields. Managers and Magic (Longman/E.P.Dutton) was an early exploration of the irrational roots of managerial behaviour, developed from comparing current situations with those of societies usually thought of as primitive. It was translated into nine other languages.

The Fleet Street Disaster (Constable) took the lid off of the restrictive practices of trades unions (frequently in collaboration with managements) in British newspapers and their development over the last few centuries, practices that hitherto had remained unpublished.

Then Northourne Tales (McGraw-Hill)also broke new ground with a textbook for grammar/high schools on comparative religion.

The Kettering Standoff was a sequel to The Fleet Street Disaster, focussing on one particular strike by journalists in the English midlands.

On graduating in history from Cambridge in 1956, he went directly to work in Fleet Street for the magazine Picture Post, and among subsequent Fleet Street posts became art editor of the Sunday Telegraph when it was launched in 1961. In 1965 he joined the management side at the International Publishing Corporation, becoming director of manpower development, and later leaving in 1970 to work as a consultant, author and academic, lecturing at INSEAD and briefly at Southampton University.

From 1980 on he devoted himself to earning a securer living managing a software house, moving to Luxembourg in 1986 as consultant to an insurance group, where he remains a retired expatriate, writing nothing but theatre reviews.