Tag Archives: business language

The eagle

Posted on May 27, 2011 by

Yesterday evening I raised my glass to Rosemary Sutcliff. It was an odd moment. I was sitting on my own in the restaurant on the sixth floor of the Leela Kempinski Hotel in Gurgaon, overlooking what my driver had proudly … Continue reading →

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Dark Angels

Posted on January 13, 2011 by

Each new year John Simmons, Stuart Delves and I meet in the Scotch Malt Whisky Society’s comfortable rooms on Edinburgh’s Queen Street, as we did today. It’s our annual Dark Angels partners’ meeting. We have a bar lunch, a bottle … Continue reading →

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Truth in Assynt

Posted on November 4, 2010 by

I’m reading a beautiful book. At The Loch of the Green Corrie is by Scottish novelist, poet and mountaineer, Andrew Greig. Part memoir, part meditation on fishing and wilderness, part tribute to another Scottish poet, Norman MacCaig, it speaks to … Continue reading →

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Memorabilia

Posted on October 28, 2010 by

My maternal grandfather, a retired admiral, could recite The Hunting Of The Snark in its entirety. As a young midshipman he had committed it to memory and there it had stuck for the remaining seventy-odd years of his life. I … Continue reading →

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Out of the darkness

Posted on October 15, 2010 by

On Wednesday evening, as the Chilean miners emerged one by one from that hellish, six-hundred-metre-long metal tube, President Piñera, who seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of bons mots, declared that his country’s most precious resource was not copper or … Continue reading →

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Why fiction?

Posted on October 8, 2010 by

‘Why should I read fiction?’ This was a question put by one of our students in Spain, a couple of weeks ago. It’s a good question, and a reminder for me that not everyone has the passion for stories that … Continue reading →

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Dawn chorus

Posted on September 30, 2010 by

Finca el Tornero de Abajo is the Spanish home of my childhood friend, novelist Robin Pilcher. A chestnut farm on a hillside in the Sierra de Aracena, 100 kms northwest of Seville, it’s a place of magical light, long views … Continue reading →

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