"The Ghost Writer" begins promisingly: Adam Lang, a Tony Blair-like former prime minister, loathed for his complicity in advancing the American-driven war on terror, is living in a kind of wounded but prideful exile on Martha's Vineyard, surrounded by retainers.
The best ones are not typically consultants who are motivated by retainers and fees but by very successful entrepreneurs who have been there and done that, and who genuinely want to help us because they were in our shoes just years ago.
Cost: PR firms charge by the project or by monthly retainer (up to $15,000 a month).
Many solo entrepreneurs who charge by the hour or by monthly retainer quickly bump up against the limitations of that approach when they run out of hours to sell and find they're charging the maximum the market will bear.
Protected by a colourful parasol held by a retainer, he conducted prayers, scattered holy water about and finally put a torch to a bonfire of straw to signify the start of the festival before hosting an open-air dinner for his several hundred guests.
Generally, outside public relations companies are paid by monthly retainer.
In 1582, Oda Nobunaga committed suicide after a revolt led by his retainer Akechi Mitsuhide; Hideyoshi immediately made peace with Mōri, and then moved east to avenge Nobunaga by defeating Mitsuhide, which he accomplished at the Battle of Yamazaki.
"T he Tale of Genji," considered by many to be the world's first novel, was written a thousand years ago, in the Heian period, by a retainer of Empress Akiko at the Imperial Palace, in present-day Kyoto.
He projects a focused, constant energy, and today his boyishness was amplified by a retainer in his mouth, a corrective measure to address problems left over from a childhood without dental insurance.
