January 2012 | Volume 08

The SpeechwriterNewsletter of The UK Speechwriters’ Guild

WelcomeWelcome to the eighth edition

of The Speechwriter newsletter.

The purpose of this publication is

to circulate examples of excellent

speeches to members of the UK

Speechwriters’ Guild. We do this

by picking out openings, closings,

one-liners and quotations and

other topical extracts from

newspapers and the internet to

identify techniques, stimulate

your imagination and provide

models which you can emulate.

This newsletter appears

quarterly and is available to

anyone who is a Standard

Member of the UK Speechwriters’

Guild.

ContributeWe need your speeches. Most

of the examples in this edition are

taken from the Americans.

We want to raise standards in

the UK. Please send examples of

speeches to:

info@ukspeechwritersguild.co.uk8

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Bill Lane was Jack Welch’s speechwriter. He wrote a

book about his experiences with the legendary leader of General Electric called Jacked Up. It explains how they built a culture of excellent presentations at the company.

It’s written in a swashbuckling style with recommendations in bold at the end of each chapter on how to improve. Invocations like:

In any presentation, to any audience, you must ‘season’ a success story – even a triumphant success story – with some commentary on ‘where we came up short’…An unalloyed ‘success story’ causes any audience to switch on its BS detectors.

‘take the first step toward improving your internal and external communications…insist on total candour in every presentation, beginning with your own.’

He ends the book with these ‘Final Thoughts’.

Look at yourself in the mirror and answer, honestly:

• Did I do my homework on this audience of one or a hundred; put myself in their place, and ask what would be useful to them?

• Are their needs the focus of my presentation?

• Will there be any question in their minds after the first minute as to why they should be listening intently to what I say?

• Have I scrubbed every needless detail, obscure acronym, and piece of trendy jargon from the pitch?

• Are all these charts necessary? Have I considered shutting down the visuals periodically and speaking to the faces in the crowd or across the table?

• Will every word and number be visible to every

single individual in every part of the room?

• Could this presentation be shorter without losing anything of major significance to the audience? (Hint: Yes of course it could.)

• Did I rehearse it? Try it out on someone I respect? Did I incorporate that person’s views and make changes?

• Do I simply want to ‘get this thing over with’? Or despite being nervous and stressed from the preparation workload, do I, like Jack Welch before his Bechtel presentation, find I just can’t wait to get up in front of these people because I know my pitch is going to blow them away?!

MASTERCLASS by Bill Lane

January 2012 | Volume 08

Churchill’s reputation as a great speaker.

Sister Miriam Joseph wrote about how Shakespeare used ‘the trivium’ – she’s worth Googling and he praises the Mormon website called the Forest of Rhetoric http://rhetoric.byu.edu/

I hope the publication of this book indicates that rhetoric is coming back into fashion. It should also encourage members of the UKSG to put pen to paper and be part of the new wave. Mr Leith has done lots of careful research and he knows his subject, it’s just a pity that he writes in a repugnant style, which is neither academic, humorous or accessible. Instead of explaining obscure figures of speech in frivolous ways, he would have been wiser to follow that corny American speechwriting mantra KISS, (keep it simple, stupid).

Presentation Secrets By Alexei Kapterev, Published by John Wiley & Sons (288 pages) ISBN 1118034961, £23.99

This is a very likeable book. It’s lavishly illustrated with

colour images explaining the art of giving speeches and presentations. It’s very personal with Mr Kapeterev giving insights into how his career as a presenter has evolved by watching Eddie Izzard and learning to sing (among other things). It has

You Talkin’ To MeBy Sam LeithPublished by Profile Books (304 pages) ISBN 1846683157, £14.99

I’m tempted to be negative about this book, but the

hardback retails at just over £7 on Amazon. That’s ridiculously cheap for a work that is flawed, but has redeeming qualities. Mr Leith is rather pleased with his wide knowledge of popular culture and high-brow literature, so we get Eminem and Beowolf mentioned in the same paragraph. I go through a work like this ruthlessly tearing out the odd page that might come in useful for a speech in the future.

I’d never heard of Ad Herennium before, (it’s a rhetorical textbook). Leith explains rhetorical principles and gives examples. He discusses Obama, Sarah Palin and Peggy Noonan in an idiosyncratic style. There was a Greek joke book called Philogelos. There’s a fine recording of Ian Richardson doing one of Satan’s speeches on YouTube. There is a persuasive critique of Tim Collins’ Iraq speech and half a chapter debunking

hundreds of quirky references that lead you to look at TED talks and slide presentations on the internet.

The book covers slide design, font selection and story construction in detail. The extraordinary thing is Alexei is Russian, but apart from the occasional presentation he refers to which is in Russian, this seems only to add to the sharpness of his observations. His range of reference stretches from Jim Jarmusch to Stephen Hawking, English academics to American business gurus.

Alexei Kapterev will be the keynote speaker at the UK Speechwriters’ Guild Spring Conference 2012 in London.

Presentation as War By Chuck Boyer & Bill Dunne Published by CreateSpace (108 Pages) ISBN 0615520235, $17.95

This is a rather unfortunate title, since in recent years

America has waged war in the way its corporate leaders like to deliver presentations – overwhelming with technology rather than the application of wisdom and reflection. Once you’ve got over that, the content is entertaining and useful.

There are profiles of great military figures from American and European history and explanations of how they used their communication skills to lead their troops. The authors have worked in corporate and military environments and they draw examples from both. To make the lessons of public speaking memorable we need metaphors and similes from all walks of life – this short book is a satisfying addition to the canon.

Brian Jenner

http://www.thespeechwriter.co.uk

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BOOK REVIEWS

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January 2012 | Volume 08

’Simplification’ isn’t always the answer

The first time I ever spoke at a conference where most of the

audience were non-native speakers of English, I quickly became aware that they weren’t understanding much of what I was saying. So I started to make it simpler - or so I thought.

In retrospect, I realised that my pitiful attempt to make things ‘simpler’ had led me to use more and more slang and colloquial expressions than I would ever normally do in an academic lecture. These may have made it easier for the native speakers of English to understand, but had made it far more difficult for everyone else.

Translate jokes or tell the audience to laugh?

A former colleague of mine, who was a fluent speaker and teacher of Russian, used to be hired to do simultaneous translation for visitors from the (then) Soviet Union at major civic events. One of his problems was that the speeches by ‘locals’ often included jokes that he found quite impossible to translate.

His solution was to say in Russian something along the lines of “he’s just told a joke that I can’t translate into Russian, so you had all better start laughing - NOW” - which apparently worked well enough for the locals to think that their guests had both understood and appreciated the joke they’d just heard.

What did they really mean?

I once worked with a graduate student, whose bilingual abilities in English and Japanese enabled her to earn fees that more than paid for her higher education. On one occasion when she got back from a high-level business meeting where she’d been doing simultaneous translation from Japanese for her British clients, I asked her how it had gone.

“OK as far as it went - but I do think that they should pay me for an extra hour afterwards to tell them what I think they really meant.”

Does it matter?

With so much hanging on recent meetings between Euro-zone leaders, not to mention other important ‘conversations’ taking place elsewhere in our ever more ‘globalized’ world, a question that comes to mind is:

How much should we worry about our reliance on simultaneous translation and/or the pretence that everyone speaks or understands English as well as we do?

This was the 700th posting on Max Atkinson’s blog: http://maxatkinson.blogspot.com/

BEN DUNCAN

Ben Duncan from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in Sweden will be speaking about how to address foreign audiences at the UK Speechwriters’ Guild Spring Conference in February.

Persistence is your greatest weapon. It is in the nature of

barriers that they fall. Do not seek to become like your opponents. You’ll have the burden and the great joy of being outsiders. Every day you live is a kind of triumph. This you should cling on to. You should make no effort to try and join society.

Stay right where you are. Give your name and serial number and wait for society to form itself around you because it most certainly will.

Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret. Look inward, and ask not if there is anything outside that you want, but whether there is anything inside you have not yet unpacked.

Quentin Crisp, An Englishman in New York

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HOW DO WE EVER MANAGE TO COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY WITH

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PEOPLE WHO SPEAK DIFFERENT LANGUAGES by Max Atkinson

January 2012 | Volume 08

about, Pericles and Dryden, the intricacies of the Andrassy Note and the deficiencies of the San Stefano Treaty, the merits of Protection and the arguments from first principles for Free Trade.

The public were paid the compliment of assuming they were intellectually curious. They weren’t patronised by being treated as rude mechanicals.

It would have been unthinkable for Gladstone to have used the House of Commons to answer a question on the fate of a character in a soap opera, as Tony Blair did when he expressed his support for the innocence of Deirdre Rachid.

It would have been inconceivable for any member of his Cabinet to have sought public approbation by letting the world know they had the critical tastes of a teenager, as Gordon Brown once did, when he confessed his fondness for the Arctic Monkeys.

It would have been impossible to credit if any leading politician of their age had been asked, as Nick Clegg was, how many lovers they had taken before marriage, or as David Cameron was, whether or not he had harboured lurid sexual fantasies about a previous party leader.

I draw these comparisons not because I am such a narrow nostalgist that I wish to live in a pristine past purged of modern popular culture.

I draw them because I look back with admiration at the great Victorian statesman, their intellectual and cultural self-confidence, and in particular the great ambitions they harboured for the British people.

Speech by Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Education, Cambridge University, 24 November, 2011

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In 1879 William Gladstone gave one of his more memorable

speeches.

In the course of his oration he invoked Pericles, Virgil and Dryden, he poured scorn on Disraeli’s doctrine of Imperium et Libertas, he discussed the merits of the Andrassy Note and the Treaty of San Stefano and he outlined six principles of Liberal foreign policy - specifically a limit on legislation and public expenditure at home to conserve the nation’s strength, the preservation of peace, the maintenance of a balance of power in Europe, the avoidance of needless entanglements, the acknowledgement of the equal rights of all nations and a positive bias in favour of those people fighting for freedom.

In the same address, Gladstone also compared the arguments for Protection and Free Trade, enumerating the advantages of Free Trade, he discussed the folly of land reform and the break up of great estates as a remedy for agricultural distress and he went onto argue that wealth creators should be free from every unjust and unnecessary legislative restraint.

Impressive you might say. Some admirable sentiments you might

be inclined to agree. With which all of us who might aspire to be Mr Gladstone’s heirs in the Commons would do well to acquaint ourselves.

Invited to reflect on other contrasts between then and now you might consider how far standards of oratory had fallen. You wouldn’t get a speech like that in Parliament today.

But Gladstone wasn’t speaking in Parliament. He was addressing a crowd of landless agricultural workers and coal miners in Scotland’s central belt.

Gladstone’s Third Midlothian Address is remembered today, insofar as it is remembered today, as the culminating moment in his back-to-the-people, grass-roots, comeback kid campaign for the premiership.

It deserves to be remembered as an important moment in the Manichean struggle between the crusader Gladstone and his cynical adversary Disraeli, between the Liberal Party in its High Victorian heyday as a guardian of limited Government and a Tory Party of a proudly imperial kind that we no longer know.

But the reason I recall that speech now, is because the most striking thing about the Midlothian campaign is not how different today’s Liberals and Tories are from those of one hundred and thirty years ago.

I think the most striking thing is how different the public of 130 years ago were.

Or more specifically, how different were the expectations that the political class had of that public.

It was assumed that an audience of agricultural labourers and mineworkers would either be familiar with or, at the very least be curious

OUTSTANDING SPEECHES

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I’d like to tell you a story about a GP, a radiologist, a pathologist

and a psychiatrist. Sounds like the first line of a joke, but it isn’t. The GP was me.

We were having dinner with our children at an open-air opera in Germany. The place was packed. Everyone was having a good time, when the dreaded happened. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an elderly man fall headfirst into his plate.

The four of us looked at each other. We knew our meal was over and we swung into action. Each working to type. The psychiatrist tending to the man’s wife. The radiologist searching for a defibrillator. The pathologist pounding on the poor man’s chest. Me giving mouth-to-mouth.

From the way he keeled over, it was obvious he was dead. But we knew there was still plenty for us to do. We had to comfort his distressed wife. And we had to keep the crowd calm for 30 minutes, till the paramedics arrived.

When it was over, my 15-year-old son turned to me and said: ‘I want to be able to do that.’

‘Do what?’ I asked him.

‘Care for people,’ he said.

His reply surprised me. Not just because impressing teenage children isn’t easy. But because what impressed him wasn’t the glory and the drama of our public display of medical skill. No. What impressed him was our simple act of caring.

Caring for a sick man. Caring for the man’s wife. And caring for the people in the crowd. That’s what inspired my son.

And that’s how my father inspired me a generation ago. It wouldn’t be allowed now, but he used to take me with him on home visits in the postwar slums of Peterborough. I watched him treat children with measles and care for the dying in their homes. That’s when I knew I wanted to be a doctor.

Why did I tell you that story? Because I believe each of us has a story about what inspired us to become a doctor. A story that made us what we are today. A story that lights our way to the future.

Our stories have never been more important. Especially now, when our profession is under pressure to replace the language of caring with the language of the market.

Address by Clare Gerada, Chair, Royal College of General Practitioners delivered at Annual Primary Care Conference, Liverpool, England, 20 October, 2011 (with support from Creativity Works, members of the UK Speechwriters’ Guild)

Some years ago, when in my last job, I conducted a small

survey of investors. It was about central bank communication. Most of the questions involved how this should be done, but I also asked about the amount of it – is it possible for central bankers to talk too much? Given markets’ apparently insatiable appetite for information, I’d expected

the answer to be a firm ‘no’. I was therefore surprised when almost 90% of respondents said ‘yes’. ‘Sometimes,’ one of them wrote, ‘these people should just shut up’. Undeterred, here I am for my first speech.

Speech given by Ben Broadbent, External Member of the Monetary Policy Committee, Bank of England at Thomson Reuters, London, 26 September, 2011

My message today is that you do not have to wait to

make a difference. Your world needs your leadership; and that means undertaking responsibility. Your challenge is to decide how you will make your contributions. I’d like to end with a brief story about a young African-American called Anthony who came to work as an intern in my office. He wrote me after his time at the Embassy and told me how he had grown up in a poor family in rural Georgia. He said that just before he went to college, his grandfather told him that the two most important things for him to remember were: one – protect your reputation; and two – always follow your dreams. I can’t think of a better two better pieces of advice to keep in mind as you embark on your futures.

Meeting our responsibilities as global citizens. American Ambassador Susman, Edinburgh University, 26 October, 2011

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‘It is said that human beings can live for 40 days without food, four days without water and four minutes without air. But we cannot live for four seconds without hope... The oxygen of human society is hope’.

Today, I am here to speak to you about hope.

I believe that if we in this room – leaders from the worlds of business, finance and politics – have the ability to imagine a future of growth and development for our enterprises and for our nations, then we also have a collective responsibility to make that vision a reality.

Speech by Sergio Marchionne, Chairman/CEO of Chrysler Group and CEO of Fiat at the CBI Conference, 21 November, 2011

And what a privilege it is to serve as Lord Mayor in such

a very special year – the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty the Queen.

A life of duty and dignity, of service and goodness – connecting the ancient institution of the Monarchy, with the demands of an ever-changing world. We all owe Her Majesty a huge debt of gratitude.

A man whose bicentenary we will celebrate in 2012 is Charles Dickens.

This lawyer of 35 years standing respectfully disagrees with his view

Ladies and Gentlemen. Good morning to you all.

It is a particular pleasure to be here today, not only because of Fiat’s relationship with the CBI, which goes back some 20 years, but also because of the opportunity it gives me to share some thoughts with you on the historic moment we are currently living through and on how businesses can contribute to the development of their domestic and regional economies.

The recent protests across Europe, soaring unemployment and the social crisis that exists in many parts of the world all provide ample reason for commentators to talk about the ‘age of outrage’ and to fuel a pessimistic vision of the future.

However – although I by no means underestimate the seriousness of current circumstances in Europe and around the globe – I am not here to dwell on the current woes or speak of a dark and uncertain future.

In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal dealing with the untimely death of Steve Jobs, I found the following statement that should serve as a proper start to my reflections tonight.

that, if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers.

But one of his central themes is connection between every member and every level of society - especially the responsibility of the haves to the have nots.

His message is just as important today. Times have changed, but we in the City know our responsibilities and our vital connections – to industry, to those in need and to our nation. We cherish this role – and I, as Lord Mayor, will do everything I can to strengthen it – and work with you, Prime Minister, and the Government, for a better, more prosperous future – for all.

And so, may I now please ask you to stand for the toast. The toast is: Her Majesty’s Ministers.

The Rt Hon The Lord Mayor of London Alderman David Wootton, Lord Mayor’s Banquet, 14 November, 2011

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.

Nobody.

You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear.

You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.

You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate.

You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.

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You didn’t have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea—God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.

But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Elizabeth Warren, Democratic United States Senate candidate 2012, speaking tour in Andover, Massachusetts, August 2011

I’m Philip Coggan I write

the Buttonwood column in The Economist and I’m chairing this event today.

I’d like to just raise just three issues, which I hope will be aired during the day which I call the Weekend at Bernie’s problem, the toddler tantrum problem and the bank of Mum and Dad problem.

So Weekend at Bernie’s for those of you not cinéastes or even if you are cinéastes because it wasn’t exactly Citizen Kane, was a film in the late 80s in which two young office types get invited to their boss’s home in the Hamptons for the weekend and they go out looking forward to sun, sea and all the rest of it, only to find that the boss has died.

So rather than spoil the party, they put dark glasses on him, prop him up and conduct the entire weekend, waving his arm around to keep the party going, and much hilarity ensues.

And the question with what’s happened since 2008 is whether this has been a Weekend at Bernie’s recovery?

Because, we’ve had many schemes, the cash for clunkers, home price subsidies, which have propped up business. And the danger is, we fear, as we saw when cash for clunkers ended, if you let your hand go, then the corpse slumps back onto the chair.

And is this recovery really as strong as it should be, or is it entirely supported by Government and Central Bank action?

And the second issue: the toddler tantrum one. Being a parent, we used to share a nanny with an investment banker, whose kid wouldn’t eat their lunch.

And so if they didn’t eat the lunch, the toddler would be given a chocolate bar, to make sure that they got some nutrition into them.

Now this only being one year old, this kid was bright enough to reckon that if you didn’t eat, then you’d get a chocolate bar and so that was the way that the diet went.

And we call this problem moral hazard.

Although Mervyn King and other people wanted not to rescue the financial sector in 2008, it was a bit like that moment on the plane, when you get on and your kid is screaming and you’ll do anything, absolutely anything, just to get them to go quiet so other people don’t stare at you. So the financial sector was rescued, interest rates were cut, some reforms were put into place, but nothing like on the scale of post 1929. Nothing like the Glass Steagal act.

So have we ended up just rewarding the toddler for the tantrum? Have we got a financial

sector heading for another crisis in a few years time?

And the third, the bank of Mum and Dad problem is another aspect of this crisis.

The bill has been passed up the chain. So individual home owners couldn’t pay their mortgages. It was passed to the banks. The banks could meet their debts. It was passed to the states. And now small states can’t meet their debts. And it’s been passed to the big states, in particular Germany.

So the question is how far can that process run? And what happens when Mum and Dad, the biggest states in the world start to run out of money? Or start to decide that maybe they are fed up of paying for their children’s sins.

Hopefully all three issues will get covered during the day.

I’m very pleased to welcome our first guest, as a former history student, I get rather fed up with the fact that economists dominate all these debates. But Niall Fergusson has plunged in even debating with Paul Krugman, which is some sort of form of lèse-majeste to even take on such a figure.

Historians have a lot to say about these issues, which have featured throughout history. He is well known to your all. His latest book is Civilisation: The West and The Rest. He’s also written highly acclaimed books about The Ascent of Money, the History of the Rosthchilds and the biography of Siegmund Warburg.

So Niall, I’d like to welcome you to the stage.

Philip Coggan, Bellwether Europe, Redefining Capital Markets, The East Wintergarden, London, 10 May, 2011

January 2012 | Volume 08

While searching for candidates for the UK

Speechwriters’ Guild Business Communicator of the Year 2012, I found a speech by Boris Johnson on the CBI website.

It was so good, it was tempting to put him forward for the award, even though he’s a politician, not a business man.

What makes Boris so special?

He has a light touch. He said his political hero was the mayor in Jaws. The mayor was the one who wanted to keep the beaches open.

This isn’t the first time that he has used a reference to popular film culture. In his 2008 New Year message he quoted Colonel Kilgore from the film Apocalypse Now, making an analogy with the recession. Lt Col Kilgore said: ‘Some day captain, this war is going to end.’ Boris insisted that one day the recession would end. Would they understand the reference outside the art house cinemas of Islington?

It was so simple, it wouldn’t matter. By using the quotation, he underlined the hopeful sentiment.

Boris peppers his speeches with surprises and self-deprecating modesty, but he also makes very serious points. He invokes the German beschäftingungs Wunder – the small employment miracle, perhaps for comic effect, but it works also as a memorable phrase.

He burbles on but he underlines the message of dealing with youth unemployment and the status of London as a European capital. Whether he’s plugging a biodegradeable coffin, a Barclay’s bike or a hydrogen generator, he’s not afraid to sell London with undisguised joie de vivre.

I say to my friends at the Treasury, F D Roosevelt had the new deal, I’ll give you the wheel deal.

A leader has to tell people what to do. Boris grasps this. Von Moltke the Elder said that ‘Strategy is not a lengthy action plan but rather ‘the evolution of a central idea through continually changing circumstances’’.

This is what’s lacking in many of the Big Society speeches. What exactly do we have to do to be part of the Big Society?

The Mayor’s message is encapsulated in one simple quotation from Mahatma Gandhi: ‘We’re putting the village back into the city.’

Every Londoner can understand that. We want the fruits of global capitalism, but it’s no good if you can’t have a civil conversation with a next-door neighbour. We need homes with ‘rooms big enough for human beings rather than hobbits’.

It’s a message that can guide every decision made in the Government hierarchy without the leader ever having to give explicit instructions.

Boris also has a vision. He can make very serious speeches like the one at the launch of a report on Britain’s airport capacity. He wants a new London airport in the Thames Estuary saying, you can’t put a ‘Quart into a pint pot at Heathrow’.

Max Atkinson points out that every speaker has the challenge of keeping the attention of the audience. Boris uses humorous asides, and questions to the audience to achieve this.

He’s spirited. He made good jokes about how the rioters didn’t steal any bikes or antiquarian books. Having pointed out how London leads the world in green energy conservation, he quipped.

One thing we’re not going to be lagging in London, is lagging.

He said:

We export teabags to China.

We export bicycles from Chiswick to Holland.

We export TV aerials from Wandsworth to Korea

We export cake to France from Waltham Forest

He does lapse into manically self-centred hyperbole about Britain, or London, being responsible for every significant innovation in green energy, sport or trade, but it keeps his audience entertained.

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IN PRAISE OF BORIS JOHNSON

Brian Jenner argues that the London Mayor’s speeches are smarter than most people give him credit for

MARINA LACROIX PROFILE

How did you get into speechwriting?

I happened to read an interview with a former speechwriter for

the Dutch government. I must have applied for a post in that office the next day. It had never occurred to me that these people exist, but it was (and still is) the perfect synthesis of the dryly analytical and the wildly creative. It also offers a socially relevant way to apply what I learned as a student of political theory and during years of competitive debating.

How far is it possible to inject passion into the speeches you write?

Europe needs and deserves more passionate speeches from European and national politicians. On top of the rational arguments for a united Europe, there are plenty of grand European ideas and narratives that could easily touch our hearts.

But it is not always feasible to build a speech around dreams and visions. Imagine the passionate delivery of a speech outlining a new funding mechanism. I doubt it would be very credible, yet that inevitably is a speech someone will have to give (and I may have to write), too.

What’s the biggest challenge writing in English as a non-native speaker?

I beg to disagree with those who believe a native’s impeccable grammar and spelling are the key to good speeches. What distinguishes a good speech from an average one is not its punctuation. It’s its ideas, its structure and its effective use of rhetoric to bring a point across. Native proficiency of a language is no measure for whether someone has a sense for that. I think the gap between native and non-native writers (and audiences) is exaggerated in this respect.

However, I’ll be the first to admit that I can write infinitely better in my mother tongue. In Dutch I can play with words and win the battle by a length. Mastering the different shades of a vocabulary, being at ease with a language’s particular expressions and constructions, having the confidence that you will spot any mistake; all of that requires extra effort from a non-native speaker. In a job that revolves so much around language, it sometimes does feel like a handicap not to be using your own.

What’s your most useful reference book?

The notebook in which I collect quotes, ideas and other references as I stumble upon them. I spot potential future uses for random bits of information all the time, but I’m terrible at recalling them once they’re needed. My notebook has helped spice up many a page.

Email: marina.lacroix@ec.europa.eu

The Speechwriter is edited by Brian Jenner.

January 2012 | Volume 08

There’s a corny line used by public speaking trainers which goes, when Aeschines spoke the people said, ‘How well he speaks’, when Demosthenes spoke the people said: ‘Let’s march!’.

Boris Johnson’s delivery can be erratic, but his speeches have charm and remind you that we can all contribute to making London a better place. He makes you want to be part of the process.

Chip and Dan Heath explain in their book Switch, How to Change Things When Things Are Hard if you want to change anything, analysing a problem in depth often doesn’t help. Instead observe what works and copy that.

The Mayor pulls off the Classical hatrick: docere, movere, delectare (educate, motivate, entertain). He livened up the CBI which is good for British business. He gives excellent speeches which invigorate our public life. We wish there were more like him.

As you grow older and life itself becomes more elaborate and complex, you find yourself using simpler words. And this is not only because your brain cells are dying. It is also, for some of us, because you have grown used to life, even comfortable with it, and understand that it comes down to essentials, that the big things count and the rest is commentary, and that way down deep in the heart of life’s extraordinary complexity is…extraordinary simplicity.

Peggy Noonan, On Speaking Well

W W W. U K S P E E C H W R I T E R S G U I L D . C O . U K • I N F O @ U K S P E E C H W R I T E R S G U I L D . C O . U K

The Speechwriter

Newsletter of The UK Speechwriters’ Guild

9

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