The Egyptian people, David Cameron said last week, have ‘legitimate grievances’. I can imagine a future historian of language examining the speeches of politicians to gauge the linguistic habits of the ruling class. Nothing could be more misleading.
The Egyptian people, David Cameron said last week, have ‘legitimate grievances’. I can imagine a future historian of language examining the speeches of politicians to gauge the linguistic habits of the ruling class. Nothing could be more misleading.
Samuel Johnson would sit in Edmund Cave’s office above that strange medieval survival, St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell, making up parliamentary speeches for the Gentleman’s Magazine from notes brought to him by men who’d heard them. Now we have verbatim transcripts of speeches (the important ones never made in Parliament), but we know they are not written by the people who deliver them.
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