Dear Readers, Merry Christmas! Or Seasonal Greetings if you prefer non-religious, holiday wishes. Or Happy Winterval, if you like the full-on, pagan, northern hemisphere, feasting and even dark-side approach (go on, let yourself go).

I’ve had, and hope I’ve shared, an absorbing PR year. It’s been threaded-through with a stab at a long-range, long-form piece of work – a book in the making – about the whence and whither and whyfore of PR. I hope that 2012 lets me explore these themes usefully, and share them amusingly.

It’s been huge fun because I’ve been teaching myself some history (Greece and Rome, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution), the better to understand the evolution from rhetoric to spin.

If all goes well, the book will be a guide to where PR came from and where it may – and where it should – go. The crux is of course, whether we’re a bunch of chancers or a cadre of professionals. And more: if we’re bits of both, how to signal the mode we’re in as we go along.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride so far, and that you’ll stick with it for another year. Let’s engage soon and help make the future something we can all be proud to share. Meanwhile, I wish you all well.