Lucky Man by Sir David Michels
English | October 28, 2025 | ISBN: 191752322X | 329 pages | EPUB | 3.69 Mb
From a modest three-bedroom semi in North London to the boardrooms of billion-pound corporations, Sir David Michels has lived what he calls 'one of the luckiest lives ever lived.'
In this candid and entertaining memoir, the man who saved Stakis from bankruptcy and sold Hilton International for £4 billion shares the remarkable story of how a self-confessed non-academic boy from Willesden Green became one of Britain's most successful hoteliers.
With characteristic wit and unflinching honesty, Michels chronicles his journey through the golden age of the hotel industry - from getting fired for serving soup instead of coffee at Simpson's in the Strand, to negotiating with billionaire owners and handling crises from terrorist bombings to the COVID-19 pandemic. Along the way, he reveals the human stories behind the headlines: the immigrant father who escaped Nazi Germany, the mother who predicted his knighthood, and the secretary who became the love of his life.
Lucky Man is more than a business memoir - it's a masterclass in leadership, negotiation and the art of understanding what makes people tick. Michels pulls no punches in revealing his mistakes (including a spectacular £600 million strategic error), his successes (saving thousands of jobs and creating twenty millionaires) and the personal cost of corporate ambition, including a painful divorce and the challenge of starting over at sixty.
From the gaming tables of Monte Carlo to the boardrooms of FTSE 100 companies, from Wednesday night poker games that lasted fifty years to high-stakes negotiations in hotel kitchens, this is the story of a man who always seemed to be in the right place at the right time - and had the courage to make the most of it.
Packed with larger-than-life characters, insider stories from the hospitality industry's most glamorous era, and hard-won wisdom about business and life, Lucky Man proves that sometimes the best adventures happen to those brave enough to say 'yes' when opportunity knocks.
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