It was what my mother used to call a dog day – one of those steamy, cloudy, still days of August when nothing much changes. I was walking to the copse at the end of Clapham Common and, when I entered it, could see it hadn’t altered much since I was last there. Two men with bicycles were waiting patiently for their lovers, one beside a bench and the other near a battered sign. Further on was a blunt looking Scotty dog, busy and alert amongst the undergrowth. There was nothing else remarkable except for the stillness of the foliage, all noise of the surrounding roads dimmed by the moist atmosphere and lack of breeze. I stood quite still, concentrated and enchanted, flashing back down the years to my childhood.

Occasionally, during a quiet school holiday, my mother would say, ‘Let’s go out in the car…’ She and I would set off, full of expectation and enthusiasm, and after meandering around for a while, often seemed to end up down a deep track in a wood. There, she’d turn off the engine, we’d wind down the windows, and go very quiet, smelling the bracken, listening to the invisible birds high up in the trees, watching the sunlight change amongst the undergrowth. It was always a magical moment, filled with joy. Eventually, she’d sigh and say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful? It’s so primitive…’

What she meant, I think, was the way you can sometimes feel fully alive when you go quiet and really focus on where you are - often helped by being completely still, in a place of natural beauty.

This is all in my mind at the moment because of the recent visit to London by Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh. He gave a speech at the Hammersmith Apollo a couple of weeks ago, and some of us went to hear him from the office. He was as inspiring and as extraordinary as ever, demonstrating what real concentration is all about in the way he picked up a glass of water to drink, in the way he spoke for an hour without notes (though he is in his eighties), and in the clarity of mind he used in answering the questions, his face alight. But what I haven’t been able to forget was the way, when he finished speaking, he just left. Whilst others around him on the stage began to move and reorganise for the next part of the evening, Thich Nhat Hanh simply stood up, turned to face the backdrop, and slipped away. There was no bow to the audience, no pause for applause. Nothing. The contrast between him and all the rock bands, mediums, orators and dancers who have filled Hammersmith Apollo before him, was enormous.

That evening I started re-reading his seminal book, The Miracle of Mindfulness. I hadn’t forgotten how practical and helpful is his advice about performing everyday tasks with mindfulness. He makes it all seem so simple. Perhaps it really is. But I had forgotten how very profound are his instructions ‘so we can live each minute of life’. At some point he says: ‘If we’re really engaged in mindfulness…then we will consider each step we take as an infinite wonder, and a joy will open our hearts like a flower, enabling us to enter the world of reality.’

Perhaps that’s what my mother and I were really doing, deep inside that wood, without realising it – getting a dose of reality by fully focusing on where we were. And what I caught a glimpse of once again on Clapham Common last Saturday.

Judith Kendra - Rider Publishing Director

Read an extract of The Miracle of Mindfulness

In a typically British summer fashion, both the sun and the rain were out in force last Saturday for the Vintage at Goodwood festival. As well as amazing vintage cars, beautiful 1940s outfits, lots of vintage stalls and an exceptionally posh looking Veuve Cliquot tent, Gizzi Erskine was at the festival letting people sample some of her delicious sweet treats.

We had a lovely tea party in the Let it Rock tent - while people danced and chatted to some good old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll, Gizzi served up free cakes, cookies and cups of tea, all served in beautiful vintage china. She was also on hand to sign her book, Gizzi’s Kitchen Magic, which features all the desserts served up as well as lots of other delicious recipes for everything from Victoria Sponge to the perfect roast chicken.

Gizzi’s Kitchen Magic

Katie - Digital Marketing Manager

The 21 speeches explored in this book are moments in time – points in history used to illustrate the development of the ways we see the world today. These world views did not appear in isolation: they grew out of the events, ideas, politics and people of the last one hundred years or so.

I reviewed over a hundred transcripts in the process of choosing which speeches to focus on, and decided to limit the final number to 21 to represent the current century. The chosen speeches all spoke to me in a powerful way and captured the essence of the ideas that I was exploring: they reflected one of two principal outlooks which currently dominate global thinking and which might be characterised – albeit simplistically – as ‘idealist’ and ‘realist’ positions.

It was also essential that the final selection had some female and non-Western voices (unlike in too many other books). To that end there are speeches by Emmeline Pankhurst, Margaret Beckett, Margaret Thatcher and Marie Fatayi-Williams, as well as by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Osama bin Laden, Salvador Allende and Mohandas Gandhi. The book features politicians, soldiers, activists and ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Many of these people brought about tremendous change, or at least came to represent that change. Whether you think they shaped the zeitgeist or grew from it depends on whether you believe in the pre-eminence of the individual or society as a whole. Examples pointing to both are included in 21 Speeches that Shaped Our World.

Speeches come in many forms and in selecting those for inclusion in this book I used a broad definition of what constitutes a speech, so there is also a written last statement, a video message, a radio broadcast and a televised address. There may be surprise at some of the other speeches that have been included: George Bush is not known as the world’s greatest orator and bin Laden – while a powerful speaker – is not usually considered to have delivered some of the modern world’s most influential speeches, though he has. If, on the other hand, the book is missing some famous speeches, it is because it isn’t intended to be a collection of the ‘greatest’ speeches – some excellent anthologies already exist. Even if you have come across some, or all, of these speeches before, they warrant re-reading – and I hope to add the understanding of how they have shaped the world we live in.

In writing this book, I also wished to introduce a new generation of readers to some of the most important words ever spoken. Many will recognise lines such as ‘we will fight on the beaches’ or ‘I have a dream’ but may have little understanding of their significance or perhaps not even know who spoke them or, more importantly, why. I have tried to address this, and therefore each speech is preceded by an introduction exploring the context and wider impact of that moment and the background of the speaker.

Despite the modern desire for sound bites, the best speeches can remind us of Shakespeare: eloquent language and novel phrases are used to impart a message about the human condition that can be understood by almost everyone. They are akin to poetry and, in fact, utilise many of the poet’s techniques, from rhythm to repetition. Like the sophist teachers of philosophy and rhetoric in ancient Greece, however, speakers can also use ambiguous language and rhetorical sleight-of-hand to promote weak or false arguments or obscure the truth. A great speaker can use their verbal skills to manipulate our emotions and deceive our thinking. In this way, speeches have the power not only to inspire others to great achievement but also to lead them to great harm (some devastating examples of which are included in this book).

In the end, though, this book is about hope: hope for a safer, more equal world, where our differences are not settled by wars and where we are able to work together to overcome the huge social and environmental challenges humanity will face over the course of this century.

Chris Abbott, author of 21 Speeches that Changed Our World: The People and Ideas That Changed the Way We Think