When Abraham Lincoln said, ‘You can be anything you want to be,’ Americans, and eventually everybody everywhere, lifted their sights. Nowadays anybody can aspire to be a leader, and nearly everybody has to lead sometimes. In Leadership, Simon McDonald assumes that thinking about leadership before you lead helps you to lead better. No matter the circumstances in which we might be called to lead – be it at work, on the sports field, or in the community – the example of top leaders in politics and public service (both their successes and shortcomings) can help you figure out your own approach. As the head of HM Diplomatic Service, McDonald was responbile for over 14,000 staff in 270 posts worldwide, worked for six foreign secretaries, and saw five prime ministers operate at close quarters. Observing these people undertaking the most important and often the most difficult work in the country, he saw the behaviours that helped them to achieve their objectives, and those which hindered them.

The recently-discovered letters of the wealthy counter-revolutionary aristocrat, Innocente-Catherine de Rougé, dowager duchess d’Elbeuf (1707-94), offer a vivid and exciting new eye-witness perspective on the French Revolution and the Terror. Hostile witness to everything about the Revolution, from the noble revolt, the storming of the Bastille and the peasant revolution in 1788-91, through to the outbreak of war, the overthrow and trial of Louis XVI and the Terror in 1791-4, the duchess’s letters to an unknown friend offer an unparalleled real-time narrative by an aristocratic woman struggling to understand radical change. Though tempted by emigration to the Low Countries, the duchess was unusual among her contemporary fellow-aristocrats in remaining in France down to her death in 1794, based in her two homes in Picardy and at the heart of Paris. As well as providing a detailed account of all she saw and read, the correspondence also portrays the anguished mental and spiritual odyssey of a highly devout octogenarian woman, who persisted inplangently declaring her outspokenly counter-revolutionary views even as she approached her own death in conditions of great personal danger. The letters constitute a remarkable example of female life-writing at the heart of the Age of Revolutions from a unique perspective.

What should the future of British foreign policy look like? For too long successive governments have shied away from acknowledging uncomfortable truths about the decline of Britain's military capabilities. As we approach the middle years of the twenty-first century a new set of urgent and daunting challenges - including climate change, technological development and the rise of AI, and a growing threat from China - lie ahead, making the need for us to reconcile ourselves with our position in the world more acute. In this persuasively argued book, Simon McDonald shows how the UK's significant soft-power strengths can be harnessed to expand our international influence. Such a shift will only be possible, he says, if we first acknowledge the challenges of Brexit and the need to reduce our unrealistic hard-power ambitions. Excellence in areas that other countries care about will keep the UK internationally relevant in the second half of the century in a way that nostalgia for a lost pre-eminence will not.

When Abraham Lincoln said, 'You can be anything you want to be,' Americans, and eventually everybody everywhere, lifted their sights. Nowadays anybody can aspire to be a leader, and nearly everybody has to lead sometimes. In his first book, Simon McDonald assumes that thinking about leadership before you lead helps you to lead better. No matter the circumstances in which we might be called to lead - be it at work, on the sports field, or in the community - the example of top leaders in politics and public service (both their successes and shortcomings) can help you figure out your own approach. Over nearly four decades in HM Diplomatic Service, Simon worked for four permanent under-secretaries and a dozen senior ambassadors before becoming permanent under-secretary himself and leading the Service (which has over 14,000 staff in 270 countries worldwide) for five years. He also worked directly for six foreign secretaries and saw five prime ministers work at close quarters. Observing these people undertaking the most important and often the most difficult work in the country, Simon saw the behaviours which helped them achieve their objectives, and those which hindered them. He then had the chance to try to apply that learning. In a closing chapter that considers the future of leadership in the UK, Simon McDonald makes a compelling case for the reform of the monarchy, the cabinet, civil service and, in particular, the House of Lords, of which he has been a member since 2021. Leadership of the United Kingdom is being debated as never before. This book is a clear-sighted and insightful contribution to that debate.

This Little Book focuses on encouraging emphasis on 'togetherness': a move away from the individual and towards the collective. Children in early years settings are faced with huge challenges regarding socialisation, sharing and growing in responsibility, and this book provides excellent opportunities for them and their carers to address these issues through team play.

This Little Book is packed with games for wet days, hall times, and just being together! It contains a collection of both familiar and brand new games for small and larger groups of children, all of which can be played using low cost and easily accessible resources.

Ideas for making and using puppets you have made yourself with the children or using bought puppets. Ideas and activities for using puppets in stories, circle time, rhythm, phonics, etc. and story starter ideas.

When a university librarian is mugged and robbed of his winnings outside a casino, DS Alistair MacRae assumes that it was an opportunistic crime, But when other incidents involving him occur, MacRae wonders whether there are other reasons for the crime When the man is murdered, MacRae is sure he knows who is responsible. But DCI Ian Forsyth has a better solution arrived at by the use of logical deduction. When the fingerprints from the front man in a financial scam are found at the scene of a murder, it is assumed that the victim was his immediate superior in the scam. When two further people with shady financial backgrounds are also killed, MacRae believes that a man who lost heavily in the scam is responsible. But Forsyth arrives at a different conclusion, is able to interpret a clue left by the last victim and thus comes up with the proof that will convince a jury that his solution is the correct one.