Stop what you’re doing. Now, read this superlative article by Noah Shachtman at Wired about how an old complicated code describing a secret society’s rituals was finally cracked using sassy computer software created to help translate foreign languages: Knight was part of an extremely small group of machine-translation researchers who […]
Having progeny of my own wending their way through ‘education’ and exams, I am struck by how little it has changed since I was their age, apart from the expected standards of writing/grammar and language learning being clearly lower these days than, say, 30 years ago. Why is this? Various […]
My short piece remonstrating with Guardian literary critic Nicholas Lezard on the fact that he writes at length in critical terms about Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged while admitting he hasn’t read it has prompted a businesslike reply from Mr Lezard himself: Dear Mr Crawford, I am, indeed, a literary critic. […]
As a former diplomat turned wannabe speechwriter I have studied closely the latest Conference speech by Labour Party leader Ed Miliband. How to assess it from a technical point of view? And what does it tell us about a possible future Prime Minister’s approach to the great foreign policy issues […]
I have written here previously on Message, Structure, Story and Signposts in public speaking. See eg here. This piece (c/o the ever-excellent Browser) is a super look at how to structure a movie plot by telling a simple story. It works for speeches too: Here is my detailed description of […]
An interesting and instructive visit to Riga for this year’s Riga Conference. Thoughts. First, Riga itself. Latvia took an enormous (and partly self-imposed) hit as the Euro zone crisis began, opting for radical austerity measures. Views now differ. Yes, the economy is growing once again at a pretty good rate. […]
This Tweet is so nice and unexpected I think that I need to share it: Stephen Pollard@stephenpollard I must say @CharlesCrawford really is superb. Tweets and blog posts are always really worth reading. Stephen himself is no slouch when it comes to good writing – including resorting as needed to the old trick […]
Update: this DT Blogs piece makes it to The Browser My latest piece over at Telegraph Blogs looks at how state A sends a message to state B. Not as easy a task as you might think: Diplomats have mulled over these questions for a good 800 years and more. […]
My various postings and pronouncements on the rights and wrongs of the UK government’s ‘threat’ to remove the diplomatic immunity of the Ecuador Embassy in London to enable J Assange to be nabbed have prompted Brian Barder to weigh in. And when Brian weighs in, he does so thoroughly. His […]
In a comment on my earlier post, my old sparring partner and inveterate contrarian Brian Barder takes up the challenge re diplomatic immunity and Assange: Entertaining knockabout, Charles, but completely wrong. The embassy’s premises are unequivocally immune from entry without the agreement of the ambassador, under international law as laid down […]
