Leading communications expert Max Atkinson points up the value of adding memorable or lively touches in a speech, eg by finding a noteworthy link to past events:

… occasionally a quick search can yield a fantastic dividend. When the Challenger shuttle disaster prompted Ronald Reagan to scrap his 1986 state of the union address in favour of a televised speech to the nation, speechwriter Peggy Noonan must have been surprised and delighted to discover that it was exactly 390 years since Sir Francis Drake died at sea – which provided for an apt and powerful contrast between the two events…

Like anything else, this sort of thing needs to be done judiciously, so that the example ‘flows’ from the speech and the speaker. Do not give the impression that your speech-writer rummaged around to drag up some history by way of aimless disjointed unoriginal padding:

…the opening passages are clunky. An attempt by a speech-writer who knows little of Poland to rummage around and find a few historical examples by way of ‘filler’. The examples used cast no light of insight on what follows, and might as well have been omitted. It is striking that there is no reference to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by name in this its 70th anniversary year.

Max’s example is the TV address by Ronald Reagan soon after the space shuttle Challenger exploded on take-off.

Peggy Noonan drafted it. It has been rated as one of the ten best US politicasl speeches of the twentieth century.

Another speech-writing ploy – if not a cliche – is to use a quote from someone else to illustrate a point. It works well when the right quote is chosen and perfectly matches the occasion on different levels simultaneously.

Here President Reagan concludes with lines from the soaring, optimistic poem by John Magee, a British-American airman who died in 1941 at the age of 19 flying a Spitfire in a mid-air collision over Lincolnshire.

Spare a few minutes and watch the whole address again. Do your hardest to stay unmoved – and fail.

l.