Dot Wordsworth

Mind your language | 11 September 2010

Although Tony Blair in A Journey calls Alastair Campbell ‘crazy’; David Miliband ‘smart’; Gordon Brown a ‘strange guy’; and a barbecue given by the Queen ‘freaky’, I do not think this is part of his ‘love letter’ to America.

issue 11 September 2010

Although Tony Blair in A Journey calls Alastair Campbell ‘crazy’; David Miliband ‘smart’; Gordon Brown a ‘strange guy’; and a barbecue given by the Queen ‘freaky’, I do not think this is part of his ‘love letter’ to America.

Although Tony Blair in A Journey calls Alastair Campbell ‘crazy’; David Miliband ‘smart’; Gordon Brown a ‘strange guy’; and a barbecue given by the Queen ‘freaky’, I do not think this is part of his ‘love letter’ to America. Certainly these words are American in flavour, but their use hardly removes barriers of comprehension for his transatlantic audience. What interest are they supposed to have in Patricia Hewitt or John Prescott? It must all be baffling.

In any case, Mr Blair slips between dialects and registers of speech with the readiness of an actor with no firmly determined linguistic character of his own.

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