The train now arriving …

4.30 am. After five days in the mountains we have spent the last seven hours trying to snatch sleep as the train rattles and sways down from the north. Now a lady with a singsong voice and cut-glass diction comes … Continue reading

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Indian autumn

It’s one of the great clichés of travel-writing that India is an assault on the senses, but stepping outside the terminal building at Delhi airport, I’m lost for any other way to describe the experience of arriving in the sub-continent. … Continue reading

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A ticklish matter

I met my first grandchild on Tuesday. She was four-and-a-bit days old. It also happened to be my sixtieth birthday. What a birthday present. It won’t be too long, I expect, before she discovers that she is quisquillosa. This is … Continue reading

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The rain in Spain

I’m on the train to catch a plane to fly to Spain where the rain, I hope, stays mainly on the plain. We, the Dark Angels, will be in the mountains of Andalucia – where fellow writer John Simmons and … Continue reading

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Cherish the stories

There’s a wise storyteller called David Campbell who cuts a distinctive figure about Edinburgh with his kilt and ponytail. ‘Story is the lifeline of human consciousness,’ says David. ‘Stories do not argue. They speak to the heart.’ Smart organisations have … Continue reading

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Human capital

I’m a latecomer to the superbly written White House drama series, The West Wing. In the first series, the deputy chief of staff meets with a black senator who wants the government to start making reparation for slavery. As their … Continue reading

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Murder by process

“Viola Tors wanted more community involvement, public hearings, more transparency, a poll, an environmental impact study …She was a killer of wonderful ideas and like so many murderers, she used procedure as a weapon.” Viola Tors features in Liberty, the … Continue reading

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‘Sir, you have agitated my heart.’

For the last nine years I’ve sat on the board of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the world’s largest literary festival. It has been one of the most enriching experiences of my working life, and every year as August comes … Continue reading

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Welcome to my blog

  I’ve called it A Few Kind Words because that’s the title of a talk I gave recently to a group of HR directors. Paradoxically, it’s HR people who are often the unkindest of all in the way they use … Continue reading

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