THE OWNER of a Glasgow-based specialist luxury operator is about to have his recollections of experiences in the travel industry immortalised in print with the publishing of his first book.
Brendan Maguire, a former travel agent who started his own operation If Only four years ago, will have his book A Suitcase of Adventures published on July 5 before a book signing in a Glasgow branch of Waterstones the following day.
The book, which has an initial hardback print-run of 3,000, has attracted national media interest, with TV presenter Chris Tarrant said to be a fan.
Maguire said he was inspired to put his thoughts on paper during a holiday in Florida. “I took a couple of books with me to read and one was McCarthy’s Bar by Pete McCarthy and I thought ‘I could do this’.
“It’s light-hearted, almost off the wall. It’s designed to make you laugh out loud. It’s quite exciting because I know how hard it is to get published – I was very lucky.”
One section of the book, which is published by London-based Contact Publishing, takes a wry look the way people behave on aircraft and in airports.
Another is an exposé of the modern trend for spas. “They’re the ‘in’ thing at the moment and every hotel must have one, but I think they’re one of the biggest cons of all time.”
At the publisher’s request, Maguire has made the book semi-autobiographical, setting out how he quit his well-paid job as a lawyer to set up an agency in his garage before establishing If Only, a top-end Indian Ocean and Middle East operator that sells almost exclusively through the trade.