Rory Sutherland

And his idea of a tacit skill, which is we know more than we can tell.

There are some generally good rules, which is write conversationally.

Much more conversationally than people think they should write because everybody thinks they have to write a... Actually, I'll give you two examples of this.

David Ogilvie, all his books are incredibly readable because I think he was a copywriter first and an author second.

His prose style is very good.

And he also adopts a clever trick, which I've stolen and which...

a few other people, is that he writes extremely plainly for the most part, but will throw in the odd sesquipedalian long word just to remind the reader that, you know, you're not an idiot.

You know, it's almost there to flatter the reader as much as it is to flatter the writer.

Conan Doyle, I was talking to Rick Rubin about this.

He and I both grew up on those Sherlock Holmes short stories, which are not only models of thinking and deduction and a fantastic lesson for mental gymnastics, I think.

Kingsley Amis believed this, that he was one of the greatest prose writers in the English language.

Because bear in mind, a lot of that stuff's written in 1880.

You read a lot of stuff that's written in 1880.

I'm

Fuck, what does that mean?

Oh, God, hold on.

I'll have to go back to page 27 to work out who on earth Mr. Homer Angel is.

Or Miss Mary?

Miss something Sutherland, isn't that?

At no point in reading a Sherlock Holmes short story have I ever had to go back a page to work out who somebody is.