An Irish author, with an English background and a wife with a Bermuda history, is again encouraging his readers to look deeper at what is wrong with the way our professional lives interact with our personal lives, and how that interaction affects society and business.

Professor Charles Handy is a business philosopher whose provocative 1989 best seller, "The Age of Unreason'', detailed the changing workplace and a new way of looking at a number of employment-related concepts.

In the US his latest book is called "The Age of Paradox'' and in Britain it is called "The Empty Raincoat''. The two editions are not exactly the same but both provide a new way of thinking about business.

His new work is not as optimistic as he first thought, and at one point he explains that his story is one for rich societies.

That story describes how a wage-earning man took great pride in growing his own vegetables, but then calculated that his garden was a poor use of time that could be better spent making more money.

Later the man ironically loses his job and can afford to buy only the cheapest of vegetables, and in the absence of his once prized vegetable garden, gardening tools and the will to start it all over again, he is left starved of food, money and work.

He writes that rich societies "have encouraged specialisation and efficiency but, as a result, have priced some of that new work out of existence, de-skilled many of their citizens, and created a class of people who have nothing to do if they have no job.'' Writes Prof. Handy: "We were not destined to be empty raincoats, nameless numbers on a payroll, role occupants, the raw materials of economics or sociology, statistics in a government report. If that is to be its price, economic progress is an empty promise.'' Prof. Handy, staying at the Princess Hotel, said that during discussions of his ideas at the offices of Fortune Magazine in New York, someone piped up that Bermuda was where the changes described in his book were actually taking place.

"I had already fixed this visit up, though,'' said the 61-year former Shell Oil International executive, who left after ten years at the company. Later he would teach a management course to the company's current chairman, Mr. John Jennings.

His wife is no stranger to Bermuda. Elizabeth Handy (nee Hill) was the daughter of Col. Roland Hill, the last commanding officer of the British garrison here 37 years ago.

Mr. Handy has written 12 books, many of them textbooks on management.

Britons may know him better through his BBC three-minute broadcasts, often featured on the Thought for the Day segment just before the 8 a.m. news, before an audience of seven million.

Assistant general manager of the services department of the Bermuda Telephone Company Ltd., Mr. Eugene Saunders, is a former student of Professor Handy at the London School of Business, which the professor helped start 27 years ago.

His book -- on best-seller lists for seven weeks -- indicates that future societies will concentrate more on individuals who make money out of nothing.

He explained: "In the past we have always made money out things, raw materials or bashing things together through the manufacturing process.

"Advanced societies, developed societies won't do that anymore. They will make money out of nothing, really out of ideas and information. That creates jobs of all sorts. Some quite ordinary jobs.

"Even me, I write a book. I created it. There wasn't anything there. When we went into the final meeting of my publishers, the day before the book was launched, 20 people came into the room who had been in one way or another associated with turning my nothing into a product that people could actually buy.

"That's one example. The other example, of course, is insurance, banking, financial services and these sorts of things. So, in a sense, is tourism. You are making money out of nothing. That creates the fuel of an economy.

"You have to have something that starts the whole process off. It used to be agricultural, then it was manufacturing. This type of society is showing that intelligence is a form of property.'' PROF. CHARLES HANDY -- "Anvanced societies. . . will make money out of nothing, really out of ideas and information.''