Phil Beadle has written a seminal piece of work exploring creativity and the timely need for Maverick behaviour in a perpetuated mediocre world. With shades of Hakim Bey's "The Temporary Autonomous Zone", the book takes the reader on a personal and philosophical journey through change, performance and failure. You know that when a book begins with an affirmation of the protests of 'Radical Muslim Feminist' Safia Aidid it is going to strike at the very heart of conservative establishment and it does so with sophistication of thought and style. With a layout that seems to be inspired by McLuhan's "The Medium is the Massage", Beadle will guide you - almost Diffordesque at times - through the emotional pitfalls and loneliness of authentic creation, whilst at other points in the book he stands back and ridicules the pretension of our successes. Either way, the book needs to be read by anyone brave enough and honest enough to understand the need for rejecting conformity and challenging blandness. This book will certainly be ridiculed, misunderstood and overlooked by the dullards Beadle urges you to fight against, but as the writer himself encourages, "Smile at them. They hate this. And fire your energy and your anger into your work."

The successor to Camus's 'The Rebel', Phil Beadle's 'Rules for Mavericks' rocks, dips and swerves like no other book of this type ever has. It is a true original combining anthropology and philosophy with a new way of looking at our world. It is revolutionary in scope and speaks not solely to intellectuals, but to all of us. The clarity of Phil's writing opens up the closed and high grounds and lets us all in to the palace of intelligence. This is no mean achievement and a more than must read.

Phil Beadle is one of the most important voices in British education. His latest book is not just about the true nature of the word 'maverick'. It is about perhaps the most important educational gift we can give, namely the courage and curiosity to truly be ourselves and not apologise for it. Maverick, as he explains, is a label often stuck on people who dare to challenge convention. It is not something they necessarily chose for themselves. But convention can never adequately describe us. Our deepest hopes and dreams are far too profound for it. Obsequious deference to convention can never really make great scientific breakthroughs, create great art or stand against tyranny. Nor can it speak to the hunger for learning in any child. It is a prison all of its own. Phil is not just some provocateur or agitator, as much as those who fear mavericks might like to belittle him with that cosy and ill-explored label. He is allergic to bullshit and he speaks for freedom against a mediocrity that can ruin lives.