Now and again I give presentations to schools on Lessons for Life. These boil down to some simple ideas: Things grow Keep your balance Be honest Don’t be stupid Guard your reputation A good way to illustrate most of these ideas is to present a lively example of someone thinking he’s been […]
It’s always good when a Pope picks up one’s ideas and gives them mass appeal. Here is Pope Francis warning that a ‘piecemeal World War Three‘ may have already begun: “Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, […]
I have always thought that in the global stakes of YouTube Crazy People in the Bath the Bosnians had a clear edge: Yet along come two genial Russians, who take things to completely new heights (or depths) in an, ahem, explosive fashion: Winners all! Clips such as this enliven any […]
My latest Telegraph piece on Ukraine is up on the DT website: Russia’s “principled demands” are unchanged: that Ukraine stay independent of all “blocs”; that eastern areas of Ukraine get radical autonomy allowing them to have special economic relations with Russia; and that Ukraine kisses goodbye to Crimea. A settlement […]
One of the sharpest knives in the British Embassy in Moscow in the early 1990s was Christopher Granville. He was the first-ever UK diplomat to resign from the FCO to set up a new financial business in Russia. After various adventures he now is a leading member of the team at Trusted […]
A short sharp piece from former US top diplomat Christopher Hill on the problems besetting the borders of many Arab states: In a region where crises seem to be the norm, the Middle East’s latest cycle of violence suggests that something bigger is afoot: the beginning of the dissolution of […]
Non-diplomatic folk may not know the different levels of visit for national leaders. These include Private: the leader visits another country for a family holiday (and may or may not have an affable pre-arranged lunch or other meetings with that country’s leader while there). Then there is Official (or Working): a […]
As you know, I have sent off the first more or less full draft of my e-book Speechwriting for Leaders. There is much fruity stuff in this, if I say so myself. One of the points I make is that before writing a word the smart speechwriter needs to think […]
My new piece for Telegraph Blogs looks at NATO’s preparedness (ie lack of) for a new assertive Russia: It is hard to imagine any situation in which Moscow decided that a full-scale military attack on central Europe would be a productive and winning idea. But what about something far more […]
Part of the charm of writing blog-pieces for national newspapers and being active on Twitter is that you attract all sorts of views. What if many of them are deliberately trollishly offensive? In principle there is nothing to be done about this if you believe in free media. Yet it […]
