26 Mar 2024
Recommended listening
YØDÆL:
Brutally Soft
Yoram Elkaim
Alumnus Yoram Elkaim shares his first musical EP, Brutally Soft. Four tracks, a blend of synth and indie pop, with strong 80s and 90s influences.
About the artist
Alumnus Yoram Elkaim, currently a lawyer at Google, has a long time passion for music and singing. A few years ago, and particularly during the pandemic, he began learning digital music production. With the help from teacher/ collaborator, musician and producer Julien Romera, using simple home recording equipment, he was able to turn the little melodies in his head into fully formed songs. He’s now thrilled to release them into the world and see where the algorithms will take them.
Recommended reading
Boys Don’t Try?
Rethinking Masculinity in Schools
Matt Pinkett and Mark Roberts
There is a significant problem in our schools: too Steph Vizard many boys are struggling. The list of things to concern teachers is long. Disappointing academic results, a lack of interest in studying, higher exclusion rates, increasing mental health issues, sexist attitudes, an inability to express emotions... Traditional ideas about masculinity are having a negative impact, not only on males, but females too. In this ground-breaking book, Matt Pinkett and Mark Roberts argue that schools must rethink their efforts to get boys back on track.
Boys Don’t Try? examines the research around key topics such as anxiety and achievement, behaviour and bullying, schoolwork and self-esteem. It encourages the reader to reflect on how they define masculinity and consider what we want for boys in our schools. Offering practical quick wins, as well as long-term strategies to help boys become happier and achieve greater academic success, the book: offers ways to avoid problematic behaviour by boys and tips to help teachers address poor behaviour when it happens; highlights key areas of pastoral care that need to be recognised by schools; exposes how popular approaches to “engaging” boys are actually misguided and damaging; details how issues like disadvantage, relationships, violence, peer pressure, and pornography affect boys’ perceptions of masculinity and how teachers can challenge these.
With an easy-to-navigate three-part structure for each chapter, setting out the stories, key research, and practical solutions, this is essential reading for all classroom teachers and school leaders who are keen to ensure male students enjoy the same success as girls.
About the authors
Matt Pinkett is a Head of English in Surrey with a personal and professional interest in gender in schools. Matt has written for a number of publications on this topic – and others – and also writes a blog in which he discusses teaching and masculinity.
Mark Roberts is Assistant Principal at a mixed 11–18 comprehensive school in Devon. Previously, he worked at an inner-city comprehensive for boys in Manchester. Mark writes a blog about teaching English and is also a frequent contributor to TES on subjects including pedagogy, behaviour, leadership, and educational research.
Day One
the gripping new literary fiction crime novel from the bestselling author of Girl A
Abigail Dean (alumna)
Marty told the reporters that she saw it happen. That when the gunman entered, she saw her mother die trying to protect her pupils.
That’s the version of Day One Marty wishes was true. But strange inconsistencies in her story begin to surface. Details that don’t add up. Questions she can’t answer.
The story ignites. Amidst the media frenzy, conspiracy theorists become obsessed with exposing what really happened. And at the epicentre of it all is a small community changed forever. Survivors crushed by guilt. Families torn in half. Outsiders consumed by the hunt for truth. Each has their own version of Day One.
Each must grapple with this tragedy, even as fanatics question whether it ever really happened at all.
But what did Marty really see? And why would she lie?
About the author
Alumna Abigail Dean was born in Manchester and grew up in the Peak District. She was formerly a Waterstones bookseller and a lawyer for Google. Her first novel, GIRL A, was a New York Times and Sunday Times top ten bestseller and a Kindle number 1 bestseller. It was chosen as a Best Book of 2021 by the Times, FT, Guardian, Independent, Stylist, and more. The rights to GIRL A sold in 36 territories and a television series is being adapted with Sony. Abigail’s second novel, DAY ONE, will be published in March 2024.
Abigail lives in London and is working on her third novel. She has always loved reading, writing, and talking about books.
The Coming Wave
AI, Power and the 21st Century’s Greatest Dilemma
Mustafa Suleyman and Michael Bhaskar
Soon you will live surrounded by AIs. They will organise your life, operate your business, and run core government services. You will live in a world of DNA printers and quantum computers, engineered pathogens and autonomous weapons, robot assistants and abundant energy.
None of us are prepared. As co-founder of the pioneering AI company DeepMind, part of Google, Mustafa Suleyman has been at the centre of this revolution. The coming decade, he argues, will be defined by this wave of powerful, fast-proliferating new technologies.
In The Coming Wave, Suleyman shows how these forces will create immense prosperity but also threaten the nation-state, the foundation of global order. As our fragile governments sleepwalk into disaster, we face an existential dilemma: unprecedented harms on one side and the threat of overbearing surveillance on the other.
Can we forge a narrow path between catastrophe and dystopia?
About the authors
Mustafa Suleyman is a serial tech entrepreneur. He is the co-founder and CEO of Inflection AI, an AI-first company redefining the relationship between humans and computers. He previously worked at Google as VP of AI Products and AI Policy. Before that he co-founded DeepMind, which was bought by Google in 2014. As Head of Applied AI, he contributed to the team’s major successes in AI research and applications for over 10 years. During his time at DeepMind he also contributed to numerous significant research publications.
Michael Bhaskar is a New York Times bestselling writer and publisher. He is Co-founder of fast-growing publishing company Canelo and a former consultant Writer in Residence at DeepMind. He has written and talked extensively about AI, technology, publishing and the future of media. He has been featured in and written for The Guardian, The FT, TIME, Fortune, MIT Technology Review, Wired and The Daily Telegraph and on BBC 2, the BBC World Service, BBC Radio 4 and NPR amongst others.
The Mad Women’s Ball
Victoria Mas (author), Frank Wynne (translator)
The Salpetriere asylum, 1885. All of Paris is in thrall to Doctor Charcot and his displays of hypnotism on women who have been deemed mad or hysterical, outcasts from society. But the truth is much more complicated - for these women are often simply inconvenient, unwanted wives or strong-willed daughters. Once a year a grand ball is held at the hospital. For the Parisian elite, the Mad Women’s Ball is the highlight of the social season; for the women themselves, it is a rare moment of hope.
Genevieve is a senior nurse. After the childhood death of her sister, she has shunned religion and placed her faith in Doctor Charcot and his new science. But everything begins to change when she meets Eugenie, the 19-year-old daughter of a bourgeois family. Because Eugenie has a secret, and she needs Genevieve’s help. Their fates will collide on the night of the Mad Women’s Ball...
About the author
Victoria Mas is 32. The Mad Women’s Ball, her first novel, has won several prizes in France and been hailed as the bestselling debut of the season. She has worked in film in the United States, where she lived for eight years. She is the daughter of the singer Jeanne Mas.
The Love Contract
Steph Vizard (alumna)
Single mum Zoe has to return to work but there’s a childcare drought and she can’t find anyone to look after little Hazel. Enter Will, Zoe’s nemesis and frustratingly handsome neighbour. When Will’s boss mistakenly assumes Will is Hazel’s father and insists he take parental leave, it seems like a simple white lie could get Zoe out of a jam and help Will to make partner at his law firm.
But life with an adorable toddler - and a growing attraction between Will and Zoe - is never as tidy as their agreement’s bullet points and dry clauses suggest. As they get deeper into the lie, the lines between truth and fiction blur. But Zoe’s hiding a secret and when it comes out, the consequences for all of them could be devastating.
About the author
Alumna Steph Vizard is an Australian writer and lawyer. After studying literature at Oxford University, she worked in publishing in London. Her debut romantic comedy, The Love Contract, won the 2022 HarperCollins Banjo Prize. She is a connoisseur of salt and vinegar chips and lives with her family in Melbourne.
Prima Facie
Based on the award-winning play starring Jodie Comer
Suzie Miller (alumna)
From the Olivier award-winning playwright of Prima Facie Suzie Miller comes her first novel, where power, patriarchy and morality diverge. ‘This is not life. This is law.’ Tessa Ensler is a brilliant barrister who’s forged her career in criminal defence through sheer determination. Since her days at Cambridge, she’s carefully disguised her working class roots in a male-dominated world where who you know is just as important as what you know. Driven by her belief in the right to a fair trial and a taste for victory, there’s nothing Tessa loves more than the thrill of getting her clients acquitted.
It seems like Tessa has it made when she is approached for a new job and nominated for the most prestigious award in her field. But when a date with a charismatic colleague goes horribly wrong, Tessa finds that the rules she’s always played by might not protect her, forcing her to question everything she’s ever believed in . . .
About the author
Alumna Suzie Miller is an international playwright, librettist and screenwriter. She has a background in law, and has won numerous awards, including the Australian Writers’ Guild, Kit Denton Fellowship for Writing with Courage and an Olivier Award. She lives in London and Sydney and is developing major theatre, film and television projects across the UK, USA and Australia.
30 years on From the First Code:
A Personal Account of the Corporate Governance Revolution
Edward Walker-Arnott KC
This is a book about corporate governance lived. It fills a remarkable gap in the literature of corporate governance.
About the author
Edward Walker-Arnott, was Senior Partner of Herbert Smith (as was) before retiring in 2000 and is still a consultant with Herbert Smith Freehills.
While a partner at HSF, Edward sat on the boards of two listed companies and on the board of a regulatory body, Lloyd’s of London. His practice regularly involved advising boards on internal problems, such as dealing with criminal chairmen (Sime Darby and Guinness). After his retirement he was involved in reforms of corporate governance at many institutions, including the National Trust, the National Theatre and the Wellcome Trust. In addition he started teaching at the law faculty at UCL and also at a number of different Universities in India (on behalf of the firm as part of its mission to assist in legal education).
In the introduction Edward explains his reasons for writing the book. First, his experience of boards pre-dated the first Code and so he was familiar with the old ways. Secondly, his experience of sitting on boards covered a wide variety of companies, ranging from listed companies, a large family-owned company, big and small charities through to a biotech start-up eventually sold for over US$1 billion. And thirdly, his involvement in the academic world showed him that, although there had been a surge of interest among academics in corporate governance, this, inevitably, had not been accompanied by a great deal of understanding of what happened in practice.
Birnham Wood
Eleanor Catton
Birnam Wood is on the move...
Five years ago, Mira Bunting founded a guerrilla gardening group: Birnam Wood. An undeclared, unregulated, sometimes-criminal, sometimesphilanthropic gathering of friends, this activist collective plants crops wherever no one will notice, on the sides of roads, in forgotten parks, and neglected backyards. For years, the group has struggled to break even. Then Mira stumbles on an answer, a way to finally set the group up for the long term: a landslide has closed the Korowai Pass, cutting off the town of Thorndike.
Natural disaster has created an opportunity, a sizable farm seemingly abandoned. But Mira is not the only one interested in Thorndike. Robert Lemoine, the enigmatic American billionaire, has snatched it up to build his end-times bunker - or so he tells Mira when he catches her on the property. Intrigued by Mira, Birnam Wood, and their entrepreneurial spirit, he suggests they work this land. But can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other?
About the author
Eleanor Catton is a Canadian-born New Zealand author. Her second novel, The Luminaries, won the 2013 Man Booker Prize and the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and was an international bestseller. As a screenwriter, she adapted The Luminaries for television and Jane Austen’s Emma for a feature film starring Anya Taylor-Joy and directed by Autumn de Wilde. Following the publication of her third book, Birnam Wood, she was named as one of the Granta Best of Young British Novelists. She lives in Cambridge, England.
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The contents of this publication are for reference purposes only and may not be current as at the date of accessing this publication. They do not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Specific legal advice about your specific circumstances should always be sought separately before taking any action based on this publication.
© Herbert Smith Freehills 2024
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