In case you’re all wondering, my eBook Speechwriting for Leaders is coming along very nicely. A bold and amusing cover is being designed (every e-Book needs a bold and amusing eCover) and the substance is entering the layout and final edit phase. The problem for any great artist with any work […]
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 […]
The bombastic smirking of Russia’s Victory Day parades is on a quite new scale this year. And why not? How often these days does a country get to boast to itself that it has grabbed part of some other country’s territory and seemingly got away with it? How did we […]
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. […]
I have opened a new writing flank with the fine US diplomatic publication Diplomatic Courier. Here is my first piece. It tells the tragic tale of the Franco-German speech disaster in Sarajevo in 1997, beginning as it mesans to continue: All happy speeches are alike. All unhappy speeches are different […]
A Polish friend draws my attention to this speech by FCO Minister of State David Lidington. It’s all about the European Union, delivered to a senior French audience earlier this week. Read the whole thing. To me as a speechwriting technician there’s something oddly ‘thin’ about it. It ticks the […]
Non-US readers may have missed the resignation speech by the energetically groping Mayor of San Diego, Bob Filner (Democrat). It’s not often that a speech by someone leaving office in high disgrace features ‘seal poop’. But this one does! Here is the full text: What I would like to leave […]
You’re wondering what I have been up to in May. I have been rushing around like a whirling dervish. Thus: • a presentation on Difficult Conversations to the senior management of a distinguished school • a talk at my old school on Lessons for Life • fielding a group of […]
The latest European Speechwriters Network event in London has passed off well. Many top names from the world of British and wider speechwriting (Phil Collins, Max Atkinson, Martin and Martha Shovel) and others did their stuff. I was pleased to meet Denise Graveline, over from the USA. She has two […]
You have to hand it to George Soros. When he goes for it, he hits the target big. Look at this speech arguing that the introduction of Eurobonds is by far the best way to solve the Eurozone’s (and EU’s existential crisis). I myself have no idea what a Eurobond […]
