One of my guilty pleasures over the years has been reading the books of Tom Hodgkinson. I read both How to be Idle, and How to be free while I was studying and working in a relatively competitive environment and found them to offer both light relief and an idea about a different way of living. I may have not quite got to that different way of living, but the idea persists for me, a number of years later.

I was pretty intrigued to know what he would do with a ‘how to’ book of business. The core theme of Hodgkinson’s body of work has concerned working out how to do not very much at all, and how to ensure that what you do do is enjoyable and mind enriching. Tax returns and VAT aren’t either of those things, so I imagined it would be a stretch to continue in the same light style.

Business for Bohemians is actually a pretty sensible, pretty amusing book about starting a creative business. The book is in part an instruction manual, with very sensible advise about writing a business plan and keeping accurate and up to date accounts. But in the main it is memoir of his own attempts to publish a magazine, run a coffee shop/book shop, organise cultural events and run online courses. His style is self deprecating and aside from the numerous name drops, funny. He is generously candid about all of the mistakes he made along the way. The message, I think, is something along the lines of ‘look at the mistakes I made so that you don’t have too’. Anyone looking for serious advice about accounting, tax and VAT should look for something far more specialist. As a guide to beginners thinking about what it is they are trying to do, and what they are trying not to do, it is I think very helpful.