Imperial Nightfall Series
A Family History of the 20th Century told through diaries, letters and other articles.
Lost London Churches
The Lost London Churches project documents the history of the 110 churches in the City of London – of which only some 40 remain .
Video archive
A series of videos which accompany the Imperial Nightfall Series are available on YouTube here .
John Brodie Donald
John Brodie Donald has published a number of other books. Find out details here .
The Two-horse Chariot
The Collected Letters of Graham Donald
Though he shared the same background and upbringing as his illustrious brother Sir Alan Donald, Graham’s life followed a darker trajectory. A tale of misspent talent, spiralling downwards into despondent alcoholism and eventual suicide.
He was a man born both too early and too late. Trained to run an Empire that was fast disappearing, he was too late to enjoy the comfortable life of previous generations. As a gay man in the 1950s, it was too early for society to accept his true nature. These collected letters reveal his real self – an intelligent, witty and literate man who had so much to offer, but found little success. Of the two horses that pulled his life’s chariot, it was the black one that always won out
You can buy it here :
Apple Books Version here
Amazon Paperback here
Kindle eBook here
Me,Mao & Milly
The Diplomatic Memoirs of Sir Alan Donald
Sir Alan Donald worked as a diplomat in China three times– in the 1950s, 60s and 80s. Each time there was a similar pattern, starting with the hopes of greater openness and freedom and ending with severe crackdowns. These were the disaster of the Great Leap Forward, the madness of the Cultural Revolution and in the 1980s, when he was there as Ambassador, the Tiananmen Square massacre. He was also closely involved with the negotiations to hand back the British Colony of Hong Kong to China in 1997. He witnessed it all and recounts his experiences in this memoir.
You can buy this book here:
Apple Books Version here
Amazon Paperback here
Kindle ebook here
When things get bigger its not just the scale that changes. Many other relationships, both overt and implied, are thrown out of whack. Once something increases in size by a few orders of magnitude, you will then discover the disorders of magnitude. It’s why communes work and communism does not. Many of today’s most contentious topics have a disorder of magnitude at their heart – a conflict between a small scale individual perspective and the collective imperative. Examples range from identity politics, global warming, cyber security, income inequality
Ranging across many different academic disciplines, including politics, economics, sociology, history, biology and physics, John Brodie Donald distils these disorders of magnitude into four key maxims. If you find yourself enraged by the headlines you read in an increasingly polarised society, you may find some solace in pondering how the underlying conflict is related to one of these four points.
You can buy this book here:
Apple Books Version here
Amazon Paperback here
Kindle ebook here
Future titles
