Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists - is designed to make lies sound truthful and …

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent, but the tests that have to be applied to them are not, of course, the same in all cases.

In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.'

A young writer is easily tempted by the allusive and ethereal and ironic and reflective, but the declarative is at the bottom of most good writing.

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

The history of the Victorian Age will never be written: we know too much about it. For ignorance is the first requisite of the historian - ignorance, which sim…