July Readers’ Corner

In 1985, aged just 15, Mark Foster was Britain’s fastest swimmer.

He’s a five-times Olympic athlete whose career in the pool spanned two decades, winning him dozens of gold medals in this period. But why did it take him until 2017 to come out as a gay man?

My Double Life, written with BBC presenter Clare Baldwin, is the story of Mark’s astonishing career so far. It charts his life from teenage rebel to one of the UK’s best-known athletes and advocates.

In it he analyses the mindset which allowed him to aim for long-term excellence and relevance, smashing sprint records again and again.

Mark Foster’s authorial debut is more than just an autobiography, however. Despite its insistence that diversity is at the heart of 21st-century competition, homosexuality and elite sports are still uncomfortable bedfellows.

My Double Life is Mark’s incredible story of how he kept part of his identity under wraps for so long – and why he felt this secrecy was so important.

Kate Vitasek is a recent addition to the London Speaker Bureau network.

After leaving the corporate world for academia, she spent years researching how symbiotic business partnerships can function and thrive in today’s increasingly crowded marketplace.

In her new book, The Vested Way: Five Rules for Achieving the Impossible, Kate transports these findings from the business world, applying them instead to personal relationships.

If this mutuality works for brands such as Jaguar Land Rover and Unipart, she argues, then it can work for personal relationships.

Kate, who is one of World Trade Magazine’s Fabulous 50+1 individuals, is a leading expert in the What’s In It For We (WIIFWe) business philosophy. Build a strategic relationship correctly, she argues, and innovation and sustainable growth will follow.