7,000 Books, 5 Million Page Views

I have gained quite a few new Substack and Bluesky readers over the last year or so. My writing has also hit two key milestones. So I thought it might be useful to begin 2025 by summarising what I am up to.

It all began back around 1988 when I was the Principal Private Secretary in what is now BEIS. Like most Private Secretaries, I immediately started moaning about the quality of the submissions etc. that were reaching my office. Tony Medawar, another Private Secretary, gently pointed out that best practice was not generally written down but instead handed down from one experienced official to another. Those new entrants who weren’t lucky enough to begin their careers working for a great boss (and someone interested in training) were never properly trained and could go through the rest of their career making mistake after mistake - and infecting others, so to speak. So I wrote some training material which Iain Dale, some years later, published as this paperback:

As I was terrified that my book might contain errors, and certain that it would soon become out of date, and as I had around the same time learned to code simple websites, I published the Understanding the Civil Service website to carry corrections and occasional additional material.

Fast forward 25 years (!) and 7,000 people have bought the book (and probably loaned it to another several thousand colleagues) whilst individual pages on the (much expanded) website have been accessed over 5 million times (and that doesn’t include web crawlers).

I am as surprised as anyone that my writing has proved so helpful to civil servants, politicians, journalists and many others - and I am hugely grateful to my many readers who have sent me up-to-date information and so ensured that later generations continue to benefit from my and their expertise.

The first three editions of the book were commercially published and promoted. The later editions were still commercially designed and printed but I now distribute them myself (either direct or via Amazon) so as to keep the price down.

My other two books, Civil Servants, Ministers and Parliament and Speaking Truth to Power, continue to sell steadily though more slowly than ‘How to be a Civil Servant’.

So where next?

The fifth edition of the ‘How to be …’ book was published just before Christmas. It’s a bit shorter than the fourth edition, partly because I have moved some material elsewhere (see below). And it is up to date, including referring to the King’s Speech. Amazon stock it and you can also buy it here for a few pounds less, if you are willing to wait an extra couple of days.

I have also extracted much of the advisory content from the website plus some stuff from the ‘How to be …’ book and created an early (and free to read) draft of How to Succeed in the Senior Civil Service. This takes the form of a series of chapters/modules aimed at direct entrants into the SCS as well as those who have already read my original book and who are now being given more responsibility. It is an anthology of what I was told (or what I wish I had been told) (and what I learned from my mistakes) as my civil service career developed. It contains advice from a wide range of very experienced officials - though some of the advice is so frank that it could never be included in formal training material.

I will post some extracts here over the coming weeks and would, as ever, be hugely grateful for comments on and corrections to the full text. It is inevitably a rather more dense read than ‘How to be …’ so I need to get the tone and framing right - and as consistent as possible. So please help me as much as you can. Please use this link to email me.

Some Further Detail (if you wish)

I will continue to use this Substack to post various items of civil service news and opinion, including anything inappropriate (including too controversial) for the books or website.

The new book’s title (How to Succeed in the SCS) builds on a suggestion from Robert Hazell but I am open to other suggestions.

One unusual website page which has benefitted from reader input is the one that compares civil service and armed services grades and ranks. Ken Graham’s advice is acknowledged in its first para, and Richard Bartholomey kindly sent me the latest version of the ‘pecking order’ chart which now evidences rather more diversity and professionalism in its characters.

I know that individual Permanent Secretaries have recommended How to be a Civil Servant to new entrants to the Policy Profession, including the Fast Stream. But the Treasury is, to date, the only department that has bought several copies for their new entrants - and negotiated a huge discount to the published price. The offer of a discount still stands if anyone else is interested. (And, no!, I haven’t yet covered my printing and distribution costs, and I doubt I ever will.)

It transpires that my generation of DTI/BEIS officials contained a number of budding authors. Tony Medawar (mentioned above) writes crime fiction and produces the International Agatha Christie Festival. Elliot Finer has written three successful novels and several short stories. Pauline Curtis wrote Success at the Heart of Government. And Chris Benjamin argues that it has been a mistake for successive governments to be such avid supporters of the financial services industry:

Martin Stanley