Charles Handy, a businessman, a writer, a philanthropist and a philosopher, offers wit and words of wisdom from a lifetime’s thinking on management. He did have even a stroke as he approached the age of 90 dimmed his intellectual curiosity or his immense zest for life. The View from Ninety is written from the vantage point of a contemplative old age and drawing on his articles for The Idler, he shares his thoughts on the big questions with which we all grapple.

Drawing in part on his own experience, in part on the wisdom of others, he sets out the principles of enjoying a fulfilled and contented life, and gently points the way to the practicalities of achieving it, while pondering on what daily worries should we learn to treat as unimportant? How do we become more accepting of ourselves and of those around us? How do we discover purpose in our everyday existence? How do we cope with grief and loss?

Handy died in December, aged 92. His death triggered a widespread sense of loss among those who had been inspired by his ideas, also gratitude for a life-time of humane and prescient insights into life, work and business, and how to transform the dreary present of organisations into a brighter future.

“Run your organisation for the benefit of others, not for yourself,” he advises, suggesting allowing employee “the freedom to make a positive contribution, otherwise they’ll make a negative one because that’s easier”. Good management and leadership, he says, are all about “finding the gift in others and getting them to use it”.

He has managed to live a contented life, in line with Aristotle’s precept of “doing your best at what you’re best at for the good of others”.

His readers should not waste their opportunity to do the same.

Handy’s first employer, oil company Shell International, dropped him into a management role in the middle of the Borneo Jungle. He writes how, in search of guidance, he bought a pile of American management books but was “appalled at how badly written they were, and how boring”. 

Spirituality a late-life echo of Handy’s upbringing in Ireland as son of an archdeacon.

The View from Ninety: Reflections on How to Live a Long, Contented Life by Charles Handy, Hutchinson Heinemann £16.99, 208 pages.