Ralph Windle RW

“An unforgettable medley. We found it wise, stimulating and funny. Very funny!” (on the first performance of The Bottom Line to the music of Joyce Suskind)

“The new website is a work of art and love, albeit technologically assisted. It very much bears your signature and Signature… elegant, inspirational…”

Christine Elliott
CEO ‘Turnaround Institute’
Former Director Betchley Park
(January 2013)

“Your Poetry of Business Life remains one of my own and our Managing Editor’s all-time favorite Berrett-Koehler publications…”

Steve Piersanti
Chairman
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
San Francisco.
(January 2013)

“Great Corporate Poet! – Ralph Windle’s incisive thinking, corporate knowledge, energy, engaging and gentle satire and humour are rare and wonderful qualities…”

The Halo and The Noose,
International Journal of Story-Telling.
(January 2013)

“Poet Laureate of the Boardroom, Bertie Ramsbottom’s verses have caught the imagination of Financial Times readers the world over.”

Financial Times

“I much enjoy your writings. Bertie is in circulation among my colleagues on campus…”

Professor Michael Porter
Harvard Business School

“We agree with Bertie’s admirers. These pieces are delightful.”

Harvard Business Review

“Congratulations on this truly outstanding contribution to “management literature” as it is so pompously termed.”

Hugh Parker
Ex-McKinsey
Director, Business International Inc.

“They’re absolutely stunning! More please! Bertie is in glorious spate – all the best for your sane singing!”

Sir Peter Parker
Chairman, Mitsubishi Electric,UK

“Bertie Ramsbottom had indeed come to my notice but I had not cracked his disguise. Congratulations! Wit seems to me a much neglected aid to management learning.”

Charles Handy
Writer, ‘The Empty Raincoat’ etc
Professor, London and Harvard Business Schools

“Thank you… for your extremely deft verses. I’m especially interested in your refined descriptions of erosion of business standards…”

Hugo Young (The Guardian)

“Bertie Ramsbottom does not appear in Foyles’ list of living poets, but for my money he is the next poet laureate of The Institute of Personnel Managers.
He is succinctly saying what has in the past required learned tomes.”

Mike Abrahams
Marks and Spencer plc

“What a pleasure your Boardroom Ballads are! I shall plagiarize unmercifully but will always accredit Bertie…”

Roy Close
Former Director General
British Institute of Management

“What George Kaufman was to Broadway, Bertie Ramsbottom is to the Business world…”

Samuel Steinberg
Womens Wear Daily,
New York

“Nothing else has pleased me more than your books. I keep them out in the living room and read some every night…”

Professor J K Galbraith
Boston, USA

“An unforgettable medley. We found it wise, stimulating and funny. Very funny…”

Christine Elliott (Large)
CEO ‘Turnaround’
Former Director Betchley Park

“How original, interesting, relevant and appropriate your verses are! All of them are evidence of a fine gift for satire and a sensitiveness to the foibles of our society
I thoroughly enjoyed Bertie Ramsbottom’s comments on the Royal Wedding. I wish he could give a comparable account of some of the activities of the Reagans for the edification of the American public. Our own commentators are so abysmally solemn and serious about the foibles of Hollywood”

Senator William Fulbright
Washington D.C.

“Bertie Ramsbottom’s satirical poems on the makers and shakers of big business soon convinced me that humor is not dead…”

Woodrow Geier
The Nashville Tennessean

“I described Bertie’s verses to the Financial Times in New York as ‘floating Xeroxes with a cult following’…”

John K Kelly
Vice President, King and Co
San Francisco, USA

Bertie Ramsbottom’s pieces are a SMASH! Received with great enthusiasm.”

AJMelrose
VP Public Affairs, Kaiser Steel
California, USA

“Mid-Career Crisis’ is right on! Tell Bertie it will appear in our December Edition”

Michael Johnson
Editor-in-chief, ‘International
Management'(McGraw Hill)

“I’ve just read your clever and insightful poem ‘A Corporate Prayer’ in the Harvard Business Review. After recomposing myself I thought it would be wonderful to print it, with your permission,in a newsletter I edit for the North American Society of Corporate Planners (NASCP) in New York…”

Francesca Turchiano
Director of Research, Associated Dry Foods
New York

“Having long admired your professional work, I find your Bertie Ramsbottom a delightful extension. Congratulations!”

Dr Amos (Joe) Jordan
Director, Georgetown Centre for Strategic and International
Studies (GCSIS) Washington DC, USA

“I would like permission to use Bertie Ramsbottom’s ‘Dementia Praecox’ in my forthcoming book ‘Whole Brain Thinking”

William Morrow.

“I loved your Corporate Lawyer piece. It was read aloud to acclamation (by Patrick Bennett QC) at our N.I.T.A.lawyers’ conference in Florida”

Jacquelyn Wonder
Denver, Colorado

“The last time Bertie Ramsbottom appeared on ‘In Business’ we had quite a response. So we thought we should bring him back again to comment on the new technology. Here he is with ‘Chips with Everything”

Peter Hobday
‘In Business’
BBC Radio Four

“Yesterday I came into the office in a very bad mood…. then I saw the book of Bertie Ramsbottom’s ballads which I have long admired – and envied. They really made me feel the sun came out..”

Jane McLoughlin
‘Editor,’Workface’ The Guardian

“Just a line to say how much Peter Hobday, Ros and I enjoyed your poetic contributions to the last series of In Business. As, indeed, did the listeners. Thank you. We also enjoyed your company and valued your ideas. If you are ever in central London around lunchtime do give us a ring”

John Skrine
Producer
BBC Radio Four

“I am sending on to you more letters we have received in response to your readings of Bertie’s poems. I thought you might like to see them. Also we have told telephone callers who want copies to write through us to you”

Beverley Storkey
Radio Four
BBC Radio Four

“Please, where can I get a copy of ‘Chips With Everything’ read by Bertie Ramsbottom on ‘In Business”

It was delicious!’
B N Gauntlett

“Could I PLEASE have a copy of the marvellous poem on Banking by Bertie Ramsbottom on In Business last Thursday”

Mrs S E Carter

“Bertie Ramsbottom absolutely captivated the hearts of all of us at the American Women’s Club that evening. He seemed to be able to put into words things that the rest of us had been thinking – or wish we had!”

Pat Fish
American Women’s Club,
London

“Americans who take their politics too seriously can lighten their loads via an appearance by an Oxford professor who is a master of satire. Come hear Ralph Windle at Personality Night”

The Record.
National Press Club
Washington DC

“We will bring our cameras in to cover your National Press Club presentation for our special on Political Satire in Washington.”

Les Krepman
Producer, NBC Television
Washington DC

“Brilliant….. Nothing like it in the USA. We would certainly like to cover your New York show”

Steve Reiner
Executive Producer,
National Public Radio, USA

“Bertie is an extraordinarily clever chap…and I’m a great believer in the power of wit!”

Robert Reich
Professor of Economics (Stanford)
Former US Secretary of State for Labor.

“When it comes to poetry, Bertie has established a genre all his own…”

George MacBeth
Former Poetry Producer
B.B.C. Radio. British poet and novelist.

“How can we begin to thank you for such a tremendous evening at the Savoy? The joyful reverberations are still sounding about my ears from all who attended, at your professionalism and the sheer brilliance of your performance…”

Lucy Thellusson
Saxton Bampfylde plc
London

“…this humour, artistry and business sense, is a combination unequalled since Mark Spade.”

Sir Alec Cairncross
Master of St. Peter’s College
Oxford

“Very cheerful and encouraging, thank you so much. I look forward to a long spell of enjoyment from reading your poems”

Bertie at the Royal Wedding 1981)
Sir John Betjeman,
Poet Laureate, London.

“At the Christmas lunch one of the Directors read out – at the Chairman’s behest – your “Corporate Prayer” to roars of laughter. You really have a hit on your hands!”

Desmond Graves
Non-Executive Director
George Wimpey plc

“Bertie. Thank you for an extraordinary performance at the Oxford Senior Managers Development Programme”

Arne Rud Christensen
Datacentraler, Denmark

“Bertie Ramsbottom has established his reputation as the wry and witty chronicler of business life”

Aidan Stowe
The Oxford Mail

“All graduate students would be well advised to heed the sagely wit of Bertie Ramsbottom’s Boardroom Ballads. Bertie’s is certainly a refreshing view after the dreary iterations of academia.”

Elizabeth Luber
Campus Magazine
American Grad School of International Management. Arizona

“Wonderful…couldn’t be better!’”

David Ewing
Former Managing Editor
Harvard Business Review

“I’ve read some of Bertie’s ramblings…I find them absolutely hilarious!”

Sir Gordon Brunton
President International Thomson

“I have many times performed Bertie pieces at my own readings in the USA; nor have I missed the substantial messages beneath…”

James Autry
Former President, Meredith
Magazine Corporation USA
Author ‘Love and Profit

“We have much enjoyed your Swinging Sheep – in fact I am just laughing again at the delightful ‘First Love’ and now I’m laughing even more at ‘Common Market”

Lord Saye and Sele
Broughton Castle, Banbury

“enough to make the most acerbic member of the board laugh even if the balance sheet doesn’t”

Allan Johns
Business Times
Oxford

“Here is all the evidence of someone who loves an audience and knows how to get them to respond”

Paul Vaughan,
Paul Vaughan Associates

“Anita saw your letter yesterday and as she was running out of the office about to embark on her two month book tour overseas, she screamed back to me ‘Yes, yes, yes to Ralph Windle”

Diane Lyndon-Smith
PA to Anita Roddick,
The Body Shop.

“Bertie’s ‘Multinational Corporation’ is worth several books on the subject…”

Dean,
Susquehanna University Business School

“I love your Boardroom Ballads, and thoroughly enjoyed them cover to cover. We look forward to hearing more of Bertie in future.”

Caroline Jacobs,
Database and Publishing Services
Director, Harvard Business Review

“Dear Ralph,
Thank you for your splendid poem ‘Dreaming Spires PLC’
I particularly liked the latin!
Best Regards, Simon.”

Simon Jenkins
The Guardian