John Cleese's 'practical and amusing' book on creativity to Hutchinson

Hutchinson has acquired a book by John Cleese, offering advice on the nature of the creative process in a "short, immensely practical and often very amusing guide".

His Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide will be published as a gift format hardback (£9.99), in e-book and audiobook on 3rd September 2020. Hutchinson did the deal for world rights with Cleese directly, and Crown now has North American rights to publish on 8th September.

"What do you need to do to get yourself in the right frame of mind? When do you know that you’ve come up with something that might be worth pursuing? What do you do if you think you’ve hit a brick wall?" the synopsis asks. "Not only does he explain the way your mind works as you search for inspiration, he also shows that, regardless of the task you’ve set yourself, you can learn to be better at coming up with a promising idea, refining it and knowing when you’re ready to act on it. We can all be more creative. John Cleese shows us how."

Of Cleese's new book, Nigel Wilcockson, associate publisher at Hutchinson, commented: "No one knows more about creativity than John Cleese. Prepare to learn at the feet of the master."

Cleese said: "Many people have written about creativity, but although they were very, very clever, they weren’t actually creative. I like to think I’m writing about it from the inside."

In total Cleese has sold 230,050 books for £2.09m in the UK via Nielsen BookScan. His memoir So Anyway (Random House Books, 2014) sold 96,898 in hardback and 30,031 copies in paperback.