Taking Down The Tents is an irreverent memoir about a boy growing up with typical 1960s enthusiasms who inadvertently qualifies as a lawyer and rises from unfashionable beginnings in a council portakabin to the panelled boardrooms of some of the UK’s once grandest corporations.

A tale of few triumphs and many disasters.

About the author

Michael Herlihy’s career encompassed many of the UK’s most famous corporate names – Hawker Siddeley, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), Imperial Brands (née Tobacco), Smith’s Group (née Industries) and the John Lewis Partnership. As a General Counsel and Independent Director he advised more than twenty public company Chairmen and CEOs. Something which, once you’ve read his book, you may find slightly alarming. Until you realise who else they were talking to.

Since shuffling off the corporate stage, he has helped to make a film The Testing Point and is currently working on another script and a novel but not (thankfully) on any poetry.

Learning Centre

Don’t have time to read the book? No problem. Check out the key learning points below.

  • Try to avoid saying things that suggest you think the clients you are aiming to cultivate are really stupid.

  • Am I feeling lucky?

  • In the course of my career I never thought of, or referred to, anyone I worked for as a ‘leader’. I found that ‘my boss’ or ‘that wanker’ covered most of the field pretty well, with a few outliers for whom those terms would have been unduly generous.

  • Please see ‘Sponsorship Opportunities’.

  • Over.