Books
In Association With
Rose's Turn
Tulipmania turned Dutchmen into debtors in the early 17th century, but no such madness has accompanied roses
Chasing Goldman Sachs
This book is a cautionary tale. It is not primarily about Goldman Sachs but all those Goldman Sachs wannabes — which means most of the firms on Wall Street, according to Suzanne McGee, a contributing editor at Barron’s who is worried that Wall Street hasn’t learned the lessons of the financial crisis
A Full Cup
A walking talking brand with distinctive facial hair and dress code. An international ‘sportsman’ with a gift for constant transatlantic publicity that lifted his business’s brand awareness sky-high. The little man’s champion against more expensive Establishment suppliers. It isn’t who you think.
They're Forever Bursting Bubbles
It’s not hedge funds’ fault that they’re so good at sensing (and shorting) trouble, says Sebastian Mallaby. Christopher Silvester meets a vocal defender of the hedgies
Speed-reading
A while ago somebody posted a list of fifteen books they had liked on the Internet, the rule being that it had to be put together in fifteen minutes.
Dead End Gene Pool
There is a moment towards the end of Wendy Burden’s scintillating and sardonic memoir of her upbringing that should chill the most vigorous, conscience-salving super-rich philanthropist. Her elderly grandfather, William AM Burden II, suffering from the advanced stages of Parkinson’s disease and with several strokes to his account, finds himself in a hospital of which he has been a stalwart benefactor.
Gentlemen & Blackguards
The Queen Mother would’ve adored Nick Foulkes’ book, subtitled Gambling Mania and the Plot to Steal the Derby of 1844.
Free the Markets!
State capitalism as practised by China, Russia and Saudi Arabia will bring free markets to ruin, says Ian Bremmer. It's lucky, say Josh Spero, that he has the ear of the West's most powerful politicians
Fail Again. Fail Better.
Andrew Ross Sorkin is the wunderkind behind Too Big to Fail, the second-by-second account of Wall Street's collapse in 2008 and winner of the Spear's Financial Book of the Year Award. Josh Spero discovers whether he'll be writing a sequel and who'll be starring in the movie
Chapter One
My lords, ladies and gentlemen: good afternoon, and welcome to the Criterion Restaurant for the second Spear’s Book Awards.
Books
Boomerang: The Meltdown Tour
Michael Lewis
Kyle Bass, a Texas-based hedge-fund manager who did well out of shorting the sub-prime property market before the 2008 financial crisis, used to play the international strategy board game Risk as a kid, which led him to find out everything about a tiny country called Iceland, which was a key strategic location in the game
The Gentry: Stories of the English
Adam Nicolson
How delicious the notion of the gentry is. How beautifully it shades into every kind of 19th-century fraudulence, into Eric Hobsbawm’s Invention of Tradition. How easily it locks on to the much later and altogether more middle-class idea of the gentleman
Zahawi and Hancock on 'Masters of Nothing'
Anne McElvoy
The Wide Blue Yonder
A new breed of Tory MPs emerged from the 2010 general election, and already some are making their mark. Anne McElvoy looks at two of Cameron’s cabal
HNW Events
Spear's/Speechly Bircham Seminar: How to be a philanthropist in the 21st century
21 February 2012
Spear's Young Turk Awards 2012
01 April 2012
Spear's Design for Living Awards 2012
01 May 2012
Spear's Wealth Insight Forum 2012
19 September 2012
The Diary
Mark Hix
04 Jan 2012
Amanda Palmer
22 Nov 2011
Patrick Perrin
11 Oct 2011
Nicky Haslam
05 Aug 2011
Stephen Webster
06 Jul 2011