On Tuesday, Sarah Tucker’s biography of Edward de Bono was launched at the House of Lords, under the patronage of Lord Bilimoria. With a foreword by Baroness Helena Kennedy, a long-time admirer of the guru of creative thinking, the book is part of an effort to reconsider de Bono and have his thinking techniques taught in UK schools.

Edward de Bono: Love Laterally is the second authorised biography. Piers Dudgeon’s Breaking Out of the Box was the first but it was published 23 years ago in very different circumstances.

Dudgeon accompanied de Bono at the peak of his energy and commercial success (although before the penetration of the French, Arab and Chinese markets). Dudgeon did a lot of biographical spadework but ended up so mesmerised by the globetrotter’s wealth, fabulous properties and groupies that he concocted an unconvincing theory of de Bono as a Svengali to explain the guru’s magnetism.

Tucker met him when he was almost 80, a decade before he died, already ebbing in strength and reputation. She spoke to him many times and he allowed some latitude when she probed his private life. She also had access to his children and former wife, Josephine, with whom he retained a warm relationship till the end.

The book is filled with the voices of people who knew, loved, admired and worked with him. Missing are the people he fell out with, who chose not to speak to Tucker. His critics are heard but not usually met.

The result is less a biography than a memoir. It’s de Bono viewed from the side, as remembered by those who were fond of him. We see de Bono in various incarnations: the adventurous young researcher, breaking an Oxford-to-London canoeing record; the 1960s breakout bestselling writer, the centre of attraction at London parties; the young father, typing away in his study and emerging to test a newly invented game on Caspar and Charlie, his two sons with Josephine; the man who changed the lives of people in places as wide apart as London, Singapore, South Africa and Australia.

Edward de Bono with Sarah Tucker, France, 2020.

It’s a palimpsest of perspectives on a semi-detached loner, rather than the portrait of a rounded personality. However, it’s enough to address the question that looms over the book. What about his will – given snide publicity by The Guardian – in which he left only some £12,000 and recognised two children, Juliana and Edward, born outside marriage?

Tucker only addresses the question explicitly at the end. But the entire book is a refutation of the insinuation that he was a charlatan who wasn’t half as successful as he claimed.

To the prurient feeding on scandal, Tucker reveals that the four children were present at the funeral. He had kept in touch with the younger two and spoke proudly of their scholastic progress.

Charlatan? His 1970s black-tie Albany Dinners attracted royalty senior cabinet ministers, and leaders in private enterprise, science and culture: personages such as Prince Philip, Dennis Healey, Terence Conran and Howard Gardner. The dinners had a long life because the table-talk was so expertly stimulated.

On the impact of his techniques, Tucker provides testimonials from people who have no reason to overestimate his uniqueness, such as Richard Branson and Rory Sutherland (vice chair of Ogilvy and Mather). We get first-hand accounts of how his techniques saved companies millions. Participants at his workshops sometimes left early because they didn’t want to share the ideas they generated in breakout rooms with their rivals in the main hall.

It’s to Tucker’s credit that now such a private man comes into view so much more clearly. But it remains a sideways view- Ranier Fsadni

As for the money: he had enough to buy Cranmer Hall in Norfolk, a set in Albany, four islands and apartments and houses around the world, including Italy, France, Ireland, Australia and Malta.

The issue is where the money went and why. Around half went to his wife on their divorce in 2004. She saw what was coming and protected her children’s inheritance. The rest was either given away, mismanaged or stolen.

He was averse to formal arrangements. What he thought he had agreed to informally was sometimes challenged. There was no central administration with oversight of all his dealings and assets. Money was wasted on initiatives with insufficient follow-up and he was careless with intellectual property.

The reasons seem rooted in various episodes of his life story. From childhood, he had been used to compartmentalising his life and operating alone, outside formal boundaries.

It’s an inclination that was likely reinforced by a traumatic experience in the early 1980s. The great embezzler, Robert Maxwell, destroyed his attempt to institutionalise a thinking school in New York. He stayed away from elaborate organisation after that and avoided legal confrontation when he could.

And then there is the existential contradiction between his self-image – as an emotionally self-contained man, whose life was like a river, not a tree with roots – with his actual behaviour. He mixed work with love affairs, the obligations of one with those of the other. But he behaved as though he expected them to remain disentangled, a recipe for trouble.

It’s to Tucker’s credit that now such a private man comes into view so much more clearly. But it remains a sideways view. It’s of public interest only because it clears the decks of doubt and scurrilous insinuation. It leaves us free to engage with de Bono’s legacy, head on.

With this, the memoir is less concerned. His books are summed up so generically that he sometimes comes across as a platitudinous bore (an ironic result because Tucker has read them all and is a fervent fan). As a developer of software for the mind, he was anything but.

He was a real pioneer in developing tools and curricula for thinking. He developed techniques for how to hold things in fuzzy focus (necessary in the preliminary stages of thinking); how to reframe perception; how to improve the processes of exploratory discussion; and how to take non-linear notes.

Reader, it’s not BS. I’ve tried them; they work. It’s time to adapt the techniques for a world of apps, e-learning and AI.