In this age of e-business, many of us over-rely on electronic communication and pay insufficient attention to the management of face-to-face relationships. John Hayes addresses this issue by examining the nature of interpersonal skills - the goal-directed behaviours that we use in face-to-face interactions in order to achieve desired outcomes. He argues that interpersonal competence is a key factor that distinguishes between successful and unsuccessful managers.

Once described as 'brilliant but eccentric ... too licentious to be published', Gainsborough's letters delighted his friends and they delight us. This book gathers together all the known letters by the illustrious eighteenth-century British painter and connects them with a narrative of Gainsborough's life that gives the correspondence a biographical coherence. The letters reveal a man who was generous and warm-hearted, devoted to his family and friends, convivial, often dissipated yet modest and God-fearing, usually sensible in his own affairs and always so in the advice he gave to others. We...