Armed with a sheet of white paper and a fistful of coloured pens, Tony Buzan would sit in his office overlooking the Thames at Marlow, Buckinghamshire, “mind mapping” his day. An affable figure who always looked crisp and dapper, Buzan was a familiar name to anyone who had tried mental self- improvement. He presented a popular television series, produced a number of self-help books and delivered rousing lectures almost evangelical in tone.
Some saw him as a guru, transforming their way of thinking and working. With receding hair, a toothy grin and a ready sense of humour, he popularised the idea of mental literacy with mind mapping, a thinking technique that he said was inspired by methods used by Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein,