Nick Asbury – författare

Most Disappointing Edition Yet 'Best. Diary. Ever' – Metro 'Cheeringly depressing' – Guardian'Abandon all hope, ye who buy it' – New York TimesPerpetual Disappointments Diary by Nick Asbury, the downbeat weekly journal for pessimists, stoics and losers everywhere, returns with its most disappointing edition yet. Ground yourself with Realistic Mindfulness Prompts, Demotivational Proverbs, Unhelpful Folk Rhymes, and reminders of Notable Deaths. Travel the world with Useful Phrases translated into four languages ('A table for one, please', 'I have destroyed my hire car’) plus advice for surviving Even Worse Case Scenarios (fighting a crocodile while tired, surviving an elephant stampede while running into an ex). Fill an idle moment with a Boring Crossword, and overcome creative blocks using Bleak Strategies.This may not be your year. But this is definitely your diary. This Edition includes:Realistic Mindfulness Prompts, Demotivational Proverbs, Unhelpful Folk Rhymes, Bleak Strategies, Even Worse Case Scenarios, Boring Crosswords, Notable Deaths, Bank Insecurity Questions, People Who Never Call, Notes Towards A Dull Novel, Pointless Doodles. This diary is not specific to one year – they are all basically the same.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, says the proverb. Never has that been truer than in the case of corporate purpose, the movement that took over the business and advertising world following the financial crisis of 2008. Guided by the mantra 'do well by doing good', businesses embraced a social purpose agenda that sought to align doing good for society with doing well in the marketplace. The result, according to author Nick Asbury, has been a wave of humourless and hubristic advertising, and a spiral of worse social outcomes, as businesses wade into issues beyond their remit, while neglecting their real ethical responsibilities. Diving into examples including Bud Light, Patagonia, Cadbury and Unilever, Nick Asbury builds a compelling case against purpose - covering what it is, where it came from, how it leads to worse marketing, and how it leads to worse social outcomes. As a positive alternative, he makes the case for creativity, cognitive empathy and valuing the human over the corporate. Amid the fierce and topical debate about purpose and corporate politics, The Road to Hell is a sharp and entertaining intervention, shedding light on how we got here - and where we go next.

We are engaged in performing four shows by night and restaging four different shows by day. And restaging all the understudy work as well. This is a lot of work. And my mind has turned to slush.Nick Asbury was in the ensemble from the Royal Shakespeare Company who, over the course of two and a half years, performed eight history plays by Shakespeare in repertory, beginning with the overthrow of Richard II and ending with the death of Richard III: a sequence of productions both critically acclaimed and watched by over 250,000 people. To keep a record of his involvement in this extraordinary and ambitious project, Nick wrote a Blog which was posted on the RSC website. This in turn became a massive success, regularly notching up 6,000 hits a week from avid followers around the world. Through Nick's engaging, observant, often hilarious words, we experience the camaraderie of actors, the terror of forgetting lines, technical difficulties, money problems, finding strange things in the bath, thirty-three broadsword fights and, and, of course, the ever-present threat of being assaulted by demented badgers after a performance.Nominated as one of 'Six Inspiring Biographies or Memoirs Every Actor Should Read' by Drama Bookshop New York, this really is a must have book for all actors and theatre fans.

To this day The White Hart and The Red Lion are two of the most popular names for a public house in England – both talismans that served as the insignia for Richard II and the banished Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, who usurped the throne in 1399.Nick Asbury acted in the Royal Shakespeare Company's famed Histories cycle which staged Shakespeare's vision of the deposition of Richard II through to the notorious Battle of Bosworth in 1485. With fellow RSC actors for company,Nick travels the country visiting the buildings, landscapes and former sites of war and intrigue that feature in the plays, and asks the question: what is it about the England of Shakespeare's Histories that continues to fascinate? From Alnwick to Eastcheap, Windsor Castle to a Leicester car park, this is his snapshot of England and its people, then and now.