Peston's analysis and prescriptions sound totally like common sense; yet in the midst of all this madness which so often leaves me feeling really depressed, he somehow snatches hope, and a degree of optimism, from the jaws of despair. Giving a name to the podcast was easy in Peston’s mind. “I felt very strongly it should be The Rest is Money because money is something everyone can relate to —and it allows us to talk about anything in the broad space of finance and business.

Robert Peston books and biography | Waterstones

The format in the first and last chapters as a note to his late father was different and quite touching, but it ended up having a bit of an intellectually snobbish air to it - as if they two alone in their economic and political outlook hold the keys to the success of the UK. Maybe they do, but as Peston himself says several times throughout the book, neither of them are the ones who suffer as a result of anything that has happened in this country in the recent decades. Published in 2017 it felt pretty much up-to-date. Despite the mayhem (no pun intended) of events over here in recent days they are all largely predicted here. It would be difficult to question his humanity, social awareness and decency though and I don’t. His love for the Arsenal too, some may find irritating, but then I’m partial.

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In the first collaboration between media outlets from different faiths, Jewish News worked with British Muslim TV and Church Times to produce a list of young activists leading the way on interfaith understanding. Gil is tenacious - a revered journalist and he follows the story into the dark web of interests that link politics, finance and the media and the deeper he goes, the more he realises how wrong he has been. At times it feels like you need a Double First in Politics and Economics to understand all of the revelations. But, no matter. When you get going with this tour de force you won't be able to put the brakes on as you navigate this labyrinthine thriller. A breathtaking, halter-skelter ride through the halls of Westminster and all the high profile areas of London.

The Whistleblower by Robert Peston | Goodreads

R.P. is a clever and interesting man. As a presenter, correspondent/journalist on T.V. I have to admit to finding him quite irritating. This remained the case reading his book. His rather laddish asides did not quite work for me. This was an excellent read , Robert Peston's easy manner of writing making the chapters flow easily and fluidly. The whistleblower by Robert Peston, is his first novel, he has his own politics show and often talks on the news about political matters. And then whispers start coming out about people who have gained more than they should have in the Bank's demise... And Gil starts to debate the whole ethos of journalism... Was he simply being used...? McDermid, who worked as a journalist in the 70s and 80s, gives a nail-biting account of the newsroom, and Allie is another character I’m looking forward to learning more about.Pacing (apart from my comment earlier) is good and follows the narrative well. The story is also both interesting and intriguing, and gets on with itself well too and I was held captive throughout my time reading. In an age when news is readily accessible, Jewish News provides high-quality content free online and offline, removing any financial barriers to connecting people. From a slower start, this story certainly gains speed. I really liked this build-up and it fits in well with the election that is upcoming in the book. Time is of the essence and it is one that has been worked well.

Robert Peston Jewish News meets: Crash, bang, wallop, it’s Robert Peston

When it came to someone he could work with, Steph McGovern’s name came up as the consumer and business journalist had also been Peston’s producer on the BBC when he was first reporting on the 2008 financial crash. “We’ve stayed close friends. She was very excited”. It’s a slightly pretentious version of why I wrote it, but I do think that the chaos we’re living through now has roots in the late 1990s. I think a lot of people have felt lost in recent years, and some of that stems from the erosion of traditional class identification, which was accelerated and magnified by the fact that Labour decided it was broadly no longer a working-class party. It meant people lost their political lodestar. If people think I’d be any good as an MP, it’s mostly a function of how terrible the current lot may be I’m as obsessed with identity as anybody these days, and the books that tend to stay with me are books that have helped me to root myself. As a teenager I discovered Isaac Bashevis Singer and he helped me understand who I was ethnically, because all my family came from the shtetls of eastern Europe. So I have a strong Jewish identity but I also have this weird longing for a lost England, which comes from a writer called Stephen Potter. His books are basically satires on a certain sort of minor public schoolboy – it’s that whole Three Men in a Boat world, which again I love. His former colleague at the Financial Chronicle, Jess Neeskens, is still a close friend and features strongly in this story which starts with Gil discovering problems at Banque de Maghreb, who have to freeze a fund heavily invested in ‘sub prime’ mortgages from US banks (does this ring a bell?). Soon Marilyn Krol, a director of the Bank of England, and on/off lover of Gil, is found hanged and Gill cannot accept the view of Assistant Met Commissioner, Kim Jansen, that it is suicide. Excellent analysis of recent events, economic, cultural and political, that have resulted in Donald Trump as President of the USA, and the Brexit mess in the UK. (I think everyone can agree that Brexit is a mess, whether you support Leave or Remain. We can disagree on why, but it's undoubtedly been a shambles.)Gil claims that he is able to compartmentalise his work and personal life. Yet in his quest for the next big story, he continues to make ill-considered decisions which will impact on his family and friends. I was a huge reader. I loved all the E Nesbits and CS Lewises, and I’m afraid to say that when I was 10, I literally sat on the sofa with The Lord of the Rings and didn’t get off till I finished it. Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a magician able to switch genres with ease. Her previous novel, Mexican Gothic, was a dark and brilliant slice of gothic fantasy; her latest, Velvet Was the Night, is a superb noir thriller set in Mexico City in the 70s following the student massacre known as “El Halconazo”. He has a final, gnomic message summing up his feelings about Yom Kippur: “Guilt follows me around like a stray dog, though I can never name the dog or the guilt. Atoning is liberation for me — and the dog.”

The Whistleblower by Robert Peston | Waterstones The Whistleblower by Robert Peston | Waterstones

I think Preston does a very fair job of analysing the reasons, and stating some hard truths: that we all-- liberal and conservative, left and right, religious and secular -- share the "blame" for the economic, cultural and political trends of the last 40 (+/-? You decide ...) years that made Trump, Brexit, the alt-right (and all the other things that keep us awake at night) possible, or even inevitable. Because of such mixed messages, he says, the adolescent Peston “devoured” books by Isaac Bashevis Singer or “almost every Jewish author on the planet”. So Jewish identity, for Peston, “is a big part of who I am, but working out exactly what that is has always intrigued me”. Peston writes a good book. I’d say writing is his forte despite telly and radio being his media of prominence. By his own admission, his vocal style, his manner of speech, takes a bit of getting used to. On paper, his voice is clear and fluid. Drawing on his considerable experience and knowledge as a leading economics journalist over several decades Peston's book ranges widely from being a book about Brexit, Trump and the populist challenge to Western liberal democracies to being an analysis of the failures of neo-liberal capitalism both in the UK and generally. There are also penetrating insights and myth-busting facts about recent British economic policies. Set in the late 1990s, a political journalist is stunned by the sudden death of his sister. The circumstances of the accident don't quite add up to the character of Clare. Gil's sister Clare has a job that means she is privy to a lot of top government procedures, policies and bureaucracy. She has an idea in mind that could be beneficial to many people. Not everyone agrees with her proposal.Things again turn personal for Gil when his on/off long time lover Marilyn is found dead in an apparent suicide – Marilyn was a director the Bank of England and had been involved with a potential Bank of England bail out and Gil is convinced that something untoward has happened to her. For example, his few paragraphs on tax reform for “self-employed” workers conflates all non-employee workers from white van man, to tradespeople, to those freelancers using service companies, and all those “forced” to work the “gig economy”, some under “zero-hour” contracts. These are not all the same. Some are long established ways of working and contribute millions to GDP; some, like zero-hour contracts, are very new and exploitative and, in most of the EU are unlawful. The suggestion that it would be fairer to tax them, and by extension everybody, all the same, simply to raise more treasury revenue for public investment, is to ignore private business needs and personal lifestyle choices for many, to say nothing of GDP. I finished the book with a sense that here is an economist breaking out of the standard economic theories and reaching for other ways of framing and understanding the situation which the British and particularly the English now find themselves in, culturally and psychologically. This book contains one of the best and most accessible explanations of why the UK has suffered from low productivity for over a decade now and why this matters and why this can be seen as a contributing factor to the success of the Leave vote.