Outcast Bernard Ginns

Bernard Ginns spent the pandemic lockdowns productively, writing a thrilling debut novel based on the true-life accounts of a hostile takeover bid at Sheffield-based William Cook Holdings.

Many of us who know Ginns recognise he is a journalist with a fine attention to detail and an eye for spotting a great story.

Combine his award-winning journalistic skill, with the access he had to the archives, unpublished memoirs and diaries of Sir Andrew Cook, and you have the ingredients to make a cracking good yarn.

What makes Outcast so engrossing is not just Ginns’ facility for a good turn of phrase: ‘The two non-executives…. were still clucking about, not quite knowing what to do but consuming lots of coffee and biscuits’, the 'gag inducing' school lunch, and ‘The thick wedge of newspapers thudded onto the mat and settled with the faint sound of rippling leaves’ are lovely descriptions that resonate, but also the pace of the novel, especially as Ginns superbly alternates the tempo creating space for the reader to absorb the detail before accelerating as the action quickens in the race to the conclusion.

Another clever trick is how he cites contemporaneous episodes happening in the world during the period the hostile bid was taking place at the end of 1996 and the beginning of 1997. It was a new dawn leading to the end of a fatigued and beaten John Major government, and Blair’s first.

It was also, can you believe it, the decade that saw the emergence of the World Wide Web?

cq[Ginns superbly alternates the tempo creating space for the reader to absorb the detail before accelerating, as the action quickens...]

In applying his in-depth knowledge detailing the inside worlds of journalism, business and PR, Ginns creates a riveting narrative, mentioning people many Yorkshire business folk will remember along the way; like references to my former colleague, Eric Barkas, The Yorkshire Post’s City Editor, who always had an opinion and intuitive commentary on matters corporate.

The novel depicts a hostile takeover bid for William Cook PLC and how its nonconformist, autocratic, gruff, northern Yorkshire businessman, Andrew Cook fought the City establishment in a battle of David and Goliath proportions where the underdog eventually, against the odds, powers through to the finishing line.

Ginns’ protagonist is a loner who overcomes a childhood blighted by tragedy to transform a failing steel company founded by his Victorian forbears and in doing so clashes with investor Triplex Lloyd to save the family firm’s independence.

He does it effectively and as the wonderfully titled chapters progress we read the dirty tricks campaigns that both sides are guilty of in getting their message across.

I enjoyed moments of Ginns’ scepticism, such as those directed towards organisations like the ‘new development corporation and agencies tasked with regenerating the former industrial heartlands.'

Throughout, the book is littered with apt quotations such as Wellington’s famous: “nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won", these never detract from the story only adding more interest as Ginns cleverly weaves in and out of different scenarios.

The lessons that can be learned from the pitfalls that beset both sides in the race to win are as relevant today as they were in the late 1990s. It is also a wonderful record of times past such as this lovely quote from the UK’s paper of record, The Times: “The bars of the City will still be packed on Thursday evenings with public relations advisors and Sunday paper journalists plying their respective trades.” The romantic portrayal of how Fleet Street worked in those days is a fascinating insight. How times have changed.

And despite the rise of social media that may be relied on to catch people out these days, Andrew Cook was a victim of the equivalent in his day; a recording of him giving a speech to the Institute of British Foundrymen that comes back to haunt him, was captured on VHS.

Although, clearly mobile phones were better in the early days, as Ginns writes: “The phone was nearly out of battery. It hadn’t been charged for a week.” Gosh, mine barely lasts 24 hours!

Ginns can surprise too; towards the climax Cook finds himself in Chester and enters the Cathedral, which is Anglican so it would not have been a provost but a dean that came up to him, but that tiny detail aside, Ginns is excellent at creating the prose to describe a tense board room, a train carriage or in the Chester case, the head-turning congregation thinking the silver-haired man had suffered some terrible bereavement and Cook’s son, William waiting outside thinking that things must be really bad if his father was praying to God. It’s those little gems in Ginns' writing style that show his acuity as a storyteller and his ability to hold the reader’s attention with edgy, well-written text.

Ginns’ theme is complex but he unpacks the minutiae of a contemporary and allegorical fable, retelling it in a captivating, enjoyable, enlightening and slick account.

I look forward to more from Ginns' pen.

In the title of a Radio 4 programme: A good read.