Luke Johnson – författare

Luke Johnson is the man behind the growth of PizzaExpress and as a host of other leading brands; one of Britain's most successful entrepreneurs with an estimated personal fortune of £120 million. In Start It Up he compresses two decades of success to reveal the realities of running your own business and bust some key myths along the way. Learn how to find the right idea or buy someone else's; source capital from all sorts of places you never expected; get the best from everyone you meet on the way - chiefly yourself; and stay sane while you do it.Start It Up is that all-too-rare thing: a how-to book by someone who actually has.

Now in paperback - Start It Up by Luke Johnson, 2012's most inspiring guide to running your own business.Running your own business is nowhere near as tough as you might think. So what are you waiting for?Luke Johnson is Britain's busiest tycoon, with a personal fortune estimated at £120 million. From Pizza Express and Channel 4 to his incisive Financial Times column, Johnson has spent two decades on the business frontline.In Start It Up, Johnson sets out to inspire - and guide - every budding entrepreneur. He tackles the issues that really matter: finding the right idea, sourcing funds, and getting the best from the people you meet on the way - chiefly yourself.'A must-read for inspiring entrepreneurs, probably the best book available on the subject' John McLaren, Management Today'Part rant, part outpouring of useful knowledge gleaned from 20 very successful years in business. There is a great deal here that is good' Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent Drinks, Financial Times'For the budding entrepreneur, this clear, thoughtful and passionate how-to guide will be an excellent first investment' EconomistLuke Johnson is one of Britain's most successful entrepreneurs with an estimated personal fortune of £120 million. He is Chairman of Risk Capital Partners and The Royal Society of Arts, and a former Chairman of Channel 4 Television. He writes columns for the Financial Times and Management Today. In the 1990s he was Chairman of PizzaExpress, which he grew from 12 restaurants to over 250; he also founded the Strada pizzeria chain and owns Giraffe and Patisserie Valerie. He lives in London and is married with three children.

Quiver is a book of reckoning, a book of ghosts, a book of lineal fracture and generational fatherlesness. It’s a visceral guide through boyhood into fatherhood. One that yields witness to trauma, erotic shames, brutalities and toxic masculinity, and in so doing, emerges with a speaker beginning to free himself. Patricia Smith said it best: “Quiver will change the way you see.”“floodghost”Mother couldn’t managewhat sated me, so she prayed:sought in silencea substance that’d soothe,something familial with grace.I groaned. Broke bodiesover blacktop’s pane, a bottom-less well of blood. At sevenI smothered a frog and fed each legto my quivering sisterlaughed while she choked out its skin. At twelve,I pulled a pistol from underthe vacant shed and shovedits shudder to a schoolboy’s temple, teased while he wept in his piss.And yet all along a Psalm, a satchelof prayer: song. Mother makingcontracts with the sky, while Itore its pages to light a fire, warmmy hands around it. Radiant blue. Redfrom a faraway pine.

Distributary picks up where the speaker from Quiver left off and delves deeper in that speaker’s concerns and fears around fatherhood, cultural violence and his daughter’s illness. It is a book of sirens and ghosts, of time collapse. How many moments tangle and spark in the waking moments of our lives. It houses a grainy melancholia, paradigms of grief. Houses hope.

Memory is a luminous centerpiece of Distributary, now presented on its own as a handmade, limited-edition chapbook.Each of the 126 copies—100 numbered and 26 lettered—is signed by the author and individually crafted by hand. Presented as a standalone work, Memory invites readers to encounter the poem in its own right: expansive, finely wrought, and wholly immersive.

In Throwing Parties: A Guide to Being a Great Host, entrepreneur Luke Johnson offers insight into his decades of experience hosting events in his beloved London. From intimate gatherings and dinner parties to weddings and massive celebrations, this fun, practical book is the perfect guide to throwing unforgettable parties.

For eight years between 1998 and 2006, Luke Johnson wrote a regular column as 'The Maverick' in the Sunday Telegraph. His short, pithy essays tackled subjects ranging from rich lists to bankrupt companies, from high finance to investment techniques, from philanthropy to trophy wives, bringing a practitioner's eye to the commercial world and the people in it. The Maverick quickly developed a cult following among readers who wanted to understand the blunt truth about investment, entrepreneurs, business history, and corporate life.This book brings together 84 of the best articles, with updates, in a single volume. What makes them unique is that Luke Johnson is not just a first-class writer, he is also one of Britain's most successful entrepreneurs. He made his name with PizzaExpress, has run and owned businesses in many different sectors, and now takes stakes in fast-growing businesses through his company, Risk Capital Partners. He is also Chairman of Channel 4. The diversity of his experience enables him to write with insight and perspective about the very serious matter of making and losing money.If you are in business, you will find The Maverick entertaining, informative and inspiring. If you are not in business, you will discover what makes business people tick, the hurdles they have to overcome to succeed, and the substantial benefits they bring to society.