ADRIAN LILEY
This is a site about all sorts of things.
First of all, and very modestly, it's about me. This is the Adrian who is (and has been) an anti-Marketeer, ex EFL teacher, a writer of strange novels, a marketing speaker at numerous conferences worldwide an ex-tennis player, a very bad cricketer, a mediaeval flag and banner painter, an excessive traveller, photographer of moderate ability and a Level 50 Pokemon Go player!
But don't despair. There is information on this site on all the different books and publications that ALL Lileys have perpetrated in the past, plus a comprehensive gallery of paintings and drawings by Charles Liley, my father. I have also included a makeshift genealogy of our family and a little on the banners and flags of Tewkesbury! And information on the latest Adrian Liley novel (a crime mystery) is here too, with an updated Anti-Marketeer's Handbook (Director's Cut).
Finally, The Reluctant Marketeer (Marketeer 8), is currently featured on our Homepage. The picture is of the disused and derelict Healing's Mill in Tewkesbury, where the chaotic denouement of the novel takes place. This and all other titles are available now on: Lulu.com
A BIT ABOUT ME (the boring stuff)
I could tell you all about myself... but that would be a bit boring.
So, just the potted highlights...
Terrible O Levels. Worse A levels. Lucky to get to Leeds University where I studied drinking, loud music and how to make a curry. Three years teaching English in Japan followed and being the face of Suntory whisky for their ads for a year. I also appeared in a Japanese 'soap'.
The Middle East came along after that, courtesy of a mistake by The British Council. 5 years in Riyadh and Doha followed, playing tennis and football (my team even won the company cup two years running) and smuggling alcohol over the border.
I then did an MA in Applied Linguistics at Essex, concentrating on motivation and psycholinguistics - something that none of my professors wanted, needed or really understood at the time.
Real work started after that with marketing and selling at a variety of language schools. I have only been sacked twice and made redundant three times. Not bad really, considering I have worked for nearly 30 institutions.
I've now lived in 4 countries (Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and China) and had my own company in two.
I now write novels (8 to date) about this crazy industry and three more serious books on what I like to call anti-marketing. I now live in a 14th century house next to the River Avon in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire.
And that's me...
(incidentally, the panda picture was taken by me at the Wolong panda station in the mountains in central China)
A BIT MORE (the less boring stuff)
I was born in Manchester but only spent the first six weeks of my life there, my parents deciding to move south to Northamptonshire, where my father worked as an art teacher in a secondary modern school (the background picture on the homepage is a fragment by him of me by a paddling pool in 1962), while my mother worked as a sister at the local hospital in Wellingborough. I grew up playing tennis, football, Subbuteo, watching Northampton Town and riding a heavy old Moulton Special bike around town.
I have one brother (Stephen) who wicket keeps for his local cricket team in Cheltenham, writes books about Vikings and makes cider in his garage. And I have a nephew (Tom) and a niece (Ellie) who also live in Cheltenham.
I also have a quite a bit to say about marketing and what I like to call anti-marketing, since I firmly believe that we should not live in a world where the sale is the most important thing!
