‘Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.’ – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Many, many years ago, I managed to convince the powers that be at my secondary school that, rather than studying French or Latin in my fifth form year, I should be allowed to study art. As I recall, this encompassed … Continue reading
My first serious girlfriend trained as a school teacher but earned her living as a journalist. Her successor was a journalist who worked in PR before going on to edit a weekly magazine. And her successor was a journalist who … Continue reading
Getting someone to change their mind is never easy. When I was growing up, we had a neighbour, a retired accountant, who held strong and often controversial views on pretty much any topic you cared to name. Give him an … Continue reading
When I was a young writer, I occasionally worked with another writer who had a sign on his office wall saying: Advertising is but promise writ large. As I recall, the observation was attributed to Samuel Johnson. I was reminded … Continue reading
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: good writing can be hard work. Good writing requires effort and it requires commitment. Good writers think about each and every word that they write. They think about whether or not … Continue reading
As a child, I had a rather low opinion of poetry. I realise now that, on the whole, the poetry that we were exposed to at school was largely of the dumpity dump variety. Robert Browning’s How They Brought the … Continue reading
Many years ago now, on a sultry summer afternoon, with the drone of the city traffic struggling to be heard above the incessant chirping of the cicadas, a group of us, perhaps a dozen of us in all, gathered on … Continue reading
I used to work with a chap who, when asked for his opinion on something, would normally start by saying ‘I cannot tell a lie ….’ But this was not true. He could tell a lie as well as any … Continue reading
I clearly remember, about 30 years ago, sitting on a Continental Airlines DC-10 at London Gatwick Airport, waiting to take-off for New York. The aircraft had left the gate on time, but almost half an hour later we were still … Continue reading