It's Not Personal evokes a life, from childhood in the Fifties through the challenges and eccentricities of the workplace, to the unpredictability of family, love and death. These are poems concerned with truth; but just as importantly, with what it means to tell a story.

Nigel Pantling was a soldier in the Seventies, Private Secretary to the Home Secretary in the Eighties, and a merchant banker in the Nineties. His pamphlets Belfast Finds Log (Shoestring Press 2014) and Hip Hind Hook (Smith|Doorstop 2018) relate the danger and human frailty he saw during Northern Ireland's "Troubles" and the Cold War, and his full collection Kingdom Power Glory (Smith|Doorstop 2016) lifts the lid on the absurdity and integrity of life in Whitehall and the City. Nigel is now a strategic adviser to company chief executives.