simply should be published

simply should be published

A typical Monday morning (coordination meeting) was followed by a lunchtime visit from John Harper, ‘my publisher’ (his website his here). I am slowly but steadily penning a new book for his collection (about the European institutions), this time about the European Economic and Social Committee. It will be an academic textbook in time-honoured tradition. I am convinced that all of the institutions deserve to be better known (it was what led me to write my books about the Parliament and the Council). The simple existence of a textbook is one way of doing this. At the moment, if you want to know about the way the Committee works, you can only refer to the Committee’s website. That’s fine, as a factual basis, but there are simply no analytical reference works available. It’s always a pleasure to see John, who is an old-fashioned publisher – and I mean that as a compliment. For example, he has just published a book by Anita Pollack, a former MEP, entitled Wreckers or Builders?, which is a history of Labour MEPs, 1979-1999. He published it simply because, in his opinion, it is a piece of history that should be published. It’s good to know that such publishers exist.