I am whirring away on my Speechwriting book. It takes me back to this effort that I prepared back in 1986 for the then Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe. The opulent surroundings and fine nourishment of the annual Lord mayor’s Diplomatic Banquet were not an obvious choice for a speech on […]
What’s not to love about this Spam message? Can I simply just say what a relief to uncover a person that really understands what they are talking about on the net. You certainly know how to bring a problem to light and make it important. A lot more people need […]
Yesterday on my lonely dog-walk I listened to an iTunes U podcast presentation from Oxford University on the Theory of Arguments as part of a series on Critical Reasoning. I did not find the lecturer easy to follow, but then it’s not easy to explain simply entailment, causation, necessity and […]
I am 100% unfamiliar with the work of US writer Joan Didion, whose writing is apparently permeated by a ‘sense of anxiety and dread’. But here is a good short piece by Maria Popova about JD’s views on writing technique. I was struck by her (JD’s) fine explanation of why […]
Rummaging around in my website I found this magnificent Islamist forgery that has been doing the global rounds for many years: a letter supposedly from Prime Minister John Major to FCO Minister of State Douglas Hogg urging him to be horrid to the Bosnian Muslims (aka Bosniacs). Here it is: […]
This one is mainly for US readers as everyone else on Planet Earth has seen it already. Astonishing for the babbling Spanish commentary. Plus the goal is quite good.
Here is my latest article for DIPLOMAT magazine – a review of David Owen’s fine new book on the diplomatic origins of the First World War. Thus: Readers of Diplomat will enjoy – and be startled by – many details Lord Owen gives us about diplomacy as practised a century […]
This video resulted from a recent masterclass I gave in Public Speaking where Anna Baker was one of the participants. Not long into the class she said that she had been toiling for weeks on a major presentation to three hundred people that was looming in some ten days’ time. […]
As will be obvious to anyone reading this, the website has had a massive overhaul to bring it humming beautifully into something like an acceptable modern form. This is my first posting on the new site. I am doing it to check that I can master the simplest WordPress buttons […]
Some of you may be wondering how to improve your written work. It’s either too long or too dense or not persuasive or just somehow too clunky and unengaging. Help is at hand. You can sign up with my new Guardian Masterclass for @guardianclasses: Professional Writing with Impact Course description […]
