My favourites this week
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Cool for the summer: The Passenger. This new series of travel guides is deeply cool. Each issue introduces you to the soul of a place, not its coffee shops. Packed with beautiful photography, charts, witty observations and investigative journalism, they’re the New Yorker and Monocle crossed with the history-and-culture bit at the back of a Lonely Planet. Ideal inspiration for this year’s adventures. Pick Berlin, Paris, Greece, Rome, Japan or Ireland.
Or was he pushed? Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell by John Preston. The new BBC series about Cap’n Bob reminds me of this excellent biography of one of recent history’s most odious but fascinating characters. A real page-turner, as is Preston’s retelling of the Jeremy Thorpe saga, A Very English Scandal.
Our first-ever online event: Rainer Münz, a world expert on migration policy, will join Sally Hayden, author of My Fourth Time, We Drowned, for an extremely timely discussion of her book and asylum policy more generally. Online on 3rd May at 7pm (2pm EST). Book your tickets now.
Happy Easter!
I’ve been surprised by, and extremely grateful for, the reaction to this newsletter so far. Never more so, though, than when I decided to write about commercial property zoning a few weeks ago. Some of you read to the end. Several of you even requested more of that sort of thing. To the rest of you, then, apologies for what follows. Blame your fellow subscribers. For the time has come to write about customs. Joy of joys.
Politicians - especially Tories - love to boast about cutting red tape. It goes down well with voters (who supports inefficiency?) and is much quicker to slap in a manifesto than engaging with substantive reform of public services. Remember the ‘bonfire of the Quangos’? Wasn’t that fun? (Not really, no.)
Brexit was meant to be all of that on steroids. A sort of Bonfire of the Eurocrats. Free of the shackles of the overweening pen-pushers in Brussels, British business could finally show the world what it’s made of.
And, to be fair, nobody who spends much time engaging with the EU’s bamboozling array of overlapping institutions comes away with the impression that it is a model of discipline.
But the alternative? Pah!
By and large, Covid turned Brexit from a ‘Big Bang’ moment to a slowly dawning realisation that things are just a little bit trickier than they were before. The most dramatic predictions of Armageddon did not materialise when the UK officially left in January 2021, partly because of a last-minute deal but mostly because everyone was stuck indoors. So it took a while for lorry queues to build up at Dover or for Brits to realise they could no longer just wave their passport at a European airport.
Given that I am neither a sausage exporter nor a lorry driver, the most tangible personal impact of Brexit until a month ago had been more expensive holidays and some very boring conversations at parties.
But what a long month it’s been. Can I suggest that anyone with strong opinions on Brexit, one way or the other, sets up a one-man-band e-commerce business? What a ride! You will soon learn tariff numbers (books are 49019900, apparently), “incoterms” (who pays what, when) and to tell your DPD from your DDP (the former is a courier, the latter what you write on your customs paperwork so the customer doesn’t get slapped with extra charges. Ideally the DPP doesn’t become involved.)
Needless to say, I have already made several cock-ups. Many, many thanks to the patient and kind customer in Switzerland who sent me regular updates on her parcel delivery (or, rather, non-delivery). I am pleased to report that it has now reached her. And to my first customer in Amsterdam, who has become a firm friend thanks to our frequent phone calls. Fearing her first book lost in the post, I dispatched another, only for the first finally to turn up. She is going to leave it on a train for somebody else to enjoy, which sounds a great plan to me.
But I am getting there, with thanks to a total stranger on Twitter, who responded to a plea for help and introduced me to the wonderful world of incoterms. I am in the process of opening business accounts with Royal Mail and DPD (who have a “customs hotline” I like the sound of).
And I am also researching something called “drop-shipping” (and its sexy brother “blind shipping”), where you pay a distributor to send books directly to the customer. Blind shipping isn’t the process of doing that drunk and blindfolded, sadly, but adding fancy-pants branded packaging so it looks like I sent it myself.
Still, I wouldn’t say no to a bit more help. So if anyone has any experience on this sort of thing, please get in touch. I would gladly give you a PDP (pretty decent percentage)!
And please share this on social media or by email with a friend or colleague you think might enjoy my newsletter. Word-of-mouth is the best marketing, and all I can afford.
Tom
Team Backstory loves
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Gay snog on the cover: Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart. Signed edition exclusive to independent bookshops. A bleak but beautiful narrative back-and-forth about what it means to be caged - by poverty, addiction, violence and prejudice - and what it takes to fly free -Tara
From Russia with trepidation: Freezing Order by Bill Browder. An extraordinary tale of murder, international crime, conspiracy & cover-up, by a financier who must be one of Putin’s most-loathed adversaries -Lucie
Something lighter, and darker? The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. A brilliant take on the traditional locked-room mystery. Aiden Bishop needs to figure out the identity of Hardcastle's killer or relive the day of her death again and again. A true 'unputdownable' -Lucie
Greetings from The Netherlands. I’m loving your newsletter.