The Little Book of Leicestershire is a compendium full of information which will make you say, 'I never knew that!' Contained within is a plethora of entertaining facts about Leicestershire's famous and occasionally infamous men and women, its literary, artistic and sporting achievements, customs ancient and modern, transport, battles and ghostly appearances. A reliable reference book and a quirky guide, this can be dipped in to time and time again to reveal something new about the people, the heritage, the secrets and the enduring fascination of the county. A remarkably engaging little book, this is essential reading for visitors and locals alike.

Updated new edition in paperback

Did You Know? In medieval times, Cheshire was a County Palatine with its own independent parliament. The village of Willaston hosts the annual World Worm Charming Championships. With 86,000 ponds, Cheshire claims to be the pond capital of Europe. Cheshire cheese is the oldest named cheese in England. The Little Book of Cheshire is a fast-paced, fact-packed compendium of the sort of frivolous, fantastic or simply strange information no one will want to be without. Here we find out about the most unusual crimes and punishments, eccentric inhabitants, famous sons and daughters and hundreds of other facts, plus some authentically bizarre bits of historical trivia. This is an ideal book to have by your bedside or to while away the hours on a long train journey. And if you like to take part in pub quizzes – or set them – then you will find this book a veritable treasure trove of useful information.

A huge range of ideas for outdoor games and activities.

The Little Book of Anger is a diatribe about many of the aggravating and irrational aspects of modern life, but done with much humour, a certain amount of research and a great deal of observation and some ill-suppressed exasperation.

It is difficult to think of a business process that is as widely unpopular, dysfunctional and discredited as traditional budgeting - yet over a decade after the creation of the Beyond Budgeting movement, many business people are unaware of its existence. And many of those that have heard of it find the Beyond Budgeting ideas difficult to grasp because they have been conditioned by experience to think in a very narrow way about the process of management. This book fills in these gaps in awareness and understanding by answering the question ‘what is Beyond Budgeting?’ in a clear and succinct way to help you make informed choices about the way that you run your business, as an alternative to blindly copying your predecessors. Amongst the things you will discover are: How the financial operating model used to organise and run the affairs of an enterprise impacts many aspects of corporate life, not just the level of business performance The universal law of complexity that explains why traditional budgeting will always fail to deliver what it promises: predictable performance. How the Beyond Budgeting process model is better equipped to deal with the complexity of modern organisational life and the uncertainty of the world Why and how an organisation has to be designed to complement the processes used to plan and control its activities. How to bring about change The goal is to help build healthier, more adaptive organisations, better able to meet the challenges and exploit the opportunities thrown up by the modern world.

The Little Book of Making Big Change Happen distills wisdom from many years and thousands of conversations with hundreds of people in the thick of making big change happen. Discover how you can solve your challenging questions, build resilience, attract support and build organisational reputation and develop innovative habits and solutions.

This is probably the most concise English history book ever published. Tony Boullemier has vividly summed up all 42 rulers of England since 1066. Each reign is condensed into five key bullet points and illustrated by a clever cartoon that sticks in the memory. It sorts out all those Edwards, Henrys and Georges – their major battles, the rebellions they faced and the bizarre ways many of them died. For younger readers, aged 10 upwards, The Little Book of Monarchs will provide a chronological narrative, giving a firm foundation for future history studies. For students and older readers, it will be an indispensable reference book – a short and snappy aide memoire to our bloody and glorious past. For everyone, it’s history with a smile on its face! Tony wrote this book as a response to the falling standards of history teaching in schools – he feels that less and less time is devoted to the subject and that children are often offered only two or three significant periods to study. He feels they are simply not getting a proper perspective, and hopes to address this by taking the reader chronologically through the ages.

Operational forecasting sits at the heart of many businesses because it informs every decision taken to get the right amount of product (or service capacity), in the right place, at the right time. But is also one of the most misunderstood and undervalued activities. As a result, most businesses carry enormous amounts of unnecessary inventory while simultaneously failing to offer their customers the level of service that they expect. So, any efficiency or performance improvement initiative is automatically held back by having to drag around this wastage At best, the managers in these businesses may suspect there is scope for improvement but have no idea how much ‘weight’ they can lose or how to go about shedding it. At worst, they assume that trying harder and investing in more “sophisticated” software will automatically take care of the problem because they are blind to the amount of surplus baggage they are dragging around. This book demystifies operational forecasting through a series of bite sized ‘lessons’ supported by simple illustrations, that address the fundamental questions that anyone with an interest or stake in operational forecasting needs to be able to answer: · Why forecast? · What do we need to understand before we start forecasting? · How do we forecast? · What does success look like? · How can we improve? Aimed primarily at forecasting practitioners and anyone responsible for, or reliant on, what they do, this book also is an excellent primer for anyone wanting to understand the process but not the mathematics that comes with most books on the subject. And if you need extra motivation to keep reading, research has shown that poor forecasting is often the single largest source of corporate waste – adding around 2% to your cost of sales. So, read on – your only risk is becoming a corporate hero!