5 Tips to Keeping New Year’s Resolutions
5 TIPS TO KEEPING NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS Do you make New Year’s resolutions? Have you tried in the past and succeeded? Or failed? Given up? Or even forgotten what they were? Here are my 5…
How to be confident
HOW TO BE CONFIDENT How do you gain confidence? From time to time, I answer readers’ questions in my blog. Today’s question comes from Australian author Anne Howell, whose memoir All That I Forgot came…
How I managed to overcome overwhelm: The joy of lists
OVERCOME OVERWHELM Things to do? Books to write, movies to watch, people to see, bills to pay, meetings to arrange, trains to catch, deadlines to meet… argh! One of the most challenging tasks in today’s…
Unique chance: Verbal Aikido Sept 1
VERBAL AIKIDO Subscribers with a good memory will remember I’ve twice featured the inimitable Luke Archer, creator of Verbal Aikido. Well, the good news is that I’ve managed to persuade him to provide a very…
How to deal with a verbal attacker – Verbal Aikido
DEALING WITH A VERBAL ATTACKER Do you ever find yourself lost for words? Or outmanoeuvred by a verbal attacker? Perhaps someone gets the better of you and you’re not even sure how they did it.…
How to tell when you’re being lied to in cyberspace
TELL WHEN YOU’RE BEING LIED TO ON THE NET Lies are big news at the moment. Lies by politicians, lies by social media bots, lies by journalists… Most of the focus is on stopping the…
How to get stuff done this autumn
HOW TO GET STUFF DONE THIS AUTUMN Holidays are over and the photos are almost all that remain (aside from maybe some extra weight around the middle). The days are drawing in, at least in…
What makes good writing great?
What makes good writing great? What sorts the Austens from the Dan Browns? The Truffauts from the Ed Woods? It’s not using clever words. It’s not making a political statement. It’s not even necessarily creating…
Till the trumpets crack – going beyond
Till the trumpets crack – going beyond In the second movement of Beethoven’s masterful symphony the ‘Eroica’ the music takes the form of a funeral march, building to a dramatic climax where the two trumpets…
Do you need your delusions?
Do you need your delusions? Listeners who believe that the BBC is a hot-bed of pinko leftie elitists who want nothing more than to attack the right, might have felt vindicated if they’d turned on…
What can we learn from the murder capital of Europe?
What can we learn from the murder capital of Europe? Just this week I heard from my neighbourhood network about yet another death from stabbing, close by in Islington. Knife crime in London reached an…
The Man Who Tasted Shapes
The Man Who Tasted Shapes – Richard E Cytowic It began in a kitchen. Two men talking over a roast chicken. But one off-beat comment would lead to a decades-long scientific detective story. And a…