An interesting old CIA analysis of Tito’s strangled Yugoslav grammar and pronuciation concluded that he probably was a Polish or Russian imposter. The CIA opined that this fact “does not matter a great deal” as his rise to world prominence occurred after any substitution. Evelyn Waugh famously fretted that Tito […]
Down with Oxbridge hegemony: He said: “We are going to have a super Ivy League of Imperial, UCL, LSE, and then Oxbridge won’t be so apart, which must be good for our society. We are already getting towards it.” Dr Hands is Master of Magdalen College School, in Oxford, which […]
Two more superb American articles about Egypt. One by Adam Garfinkle looms at the very big picture and has some mightily wise words to say on the logic of political change: We can see in past developments leading to liberal democracy the dialectical relationships among technological changes, social mobilization, economic […]
Here I am over at the Sunday Post in Scotland talking about the legendary Martin Luther King speech in August 1963: What elements make a great speech? Everything fits like a jigsaw — the words, emotional tone, audience, occasion and message. A great speech is a conversation with the audience, […]
Two Tweets, one after the other: New Statesman @NewStatesman 2m Of course all men don’t hate women. But all men must know they benefit from sexism, writes @PennyRed https://ow.ly/nYVZg Telegraph News @TelegraphNews 2m Girls escape forced marriage by hiding spoons in their clothes to set off airport metal detectors and […]
You’ll all be pleased to know that at long last you can sign up to one of my lively and memorable Negotiation Skills masterclasses, thanks to the good offices of Guardian MasterClasses: This is an exclusive opportunity to join Charles Crawford in a small group for an intensive workshop that […]
My new piece for The Commentator: The main reason why I think it’s almost better for Western governments to say as little as possible in these grim circumstances rather than make loud statements of condemnation is that words without action look ‘weak’. Any statements made are mainly for domestic and […]
Instapundit is 12 today. He helped create and define the very idea of ‘blogging’. Which in part is why you are reading this. This sort of unflagging effort takes incredible diligence and generosity. Many of Glenn Reynolds’ posts are little more than a link to something of interest (usually to […]
As you can see, I have been reviving my flagging career as a Daily Telegraph blogger. This one prompted by the death of Sir Kenneth James (one of my distinguished predecessors as Ambassador in Warsaw) popp’d up this morning, remembering lost times at the Foreign Office : One key difference between […]
It’s pretty obvious that the ill-fated Russia re-set button produced before a bemused Sergey Lavrov by an excited Hillary Clinton back in 2009 is now sitting prominently in the Russian Foreign Ministry’s famed Museum of Diplomatic Curiosities, an exhibit put there for young diplomats to show them how not to […]
