This third volume in Paxman’s series on British culture essentially presents a well-argued case for retaining the monarchy, whilst simultaneously recognising the manifold flaws, improbabilities, and injustices of the system. And, actually, I rather agree with his point of view – which, to some degree, makes for a less challenging and engaging read. I always think it’s always more interesting to read things which challenge your views, rather than things which reinforce them – though often, things which challenge your views end up reinforcing them anyway.

Paxman uses an awful lot of history of our monarchy, and several throughout the world, to flesh out his argument, and there is obvious potential for this to become very dry and dull – a potential that, fortunately, is never fulfilled. Paxman crafts a cogent, coherent, and entertaining argument, presented with the wry, dry humour for which he has become renowned.

The real joy of the book is in Paxman’s narrative. It would be easy for a title such as these to lose its narrative thread, but by providing a clear argument running throughout the book, Paxman manages to engage the reader and maintain their engagement, even when explaining complex historical events – albeit in a very accessible style.

Paxman provides a robustly constructed, irreverent, and entertaining guide to an institution he argues is simultaneously and paradoxically anachronistic, yet relevant and essential to today’s society. To a person like me – relatively poorly informed about British history – Paxman provides a great introduction and makes a clear argument for retention of the monarchy, whilst also allowing his trademark personality to shine through.

I thoroughly enjoyed On Royalty, and would happily recommend it: Its humour gives it easy-read levity, whilst its recurring themes and central message make it thought-provoking and memorable.

On Royalty is available now from amazon.co.uk in paperback and on Kindle.

My recommended read for this weekend has an educational slant: Jeevan Vagagar’s brilliant Guardian report on the day Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of Ofsted, visited Park View School in Birmingham.

Beyond Words by John Humphrys was published in 2006 in the wake of the popularity of Lynne Truss’s Eats Shoots and Leaves. It’s very much in the same vein, essentially a extended rant about the use of language, though Humphrys’s is rather less instructive. The back cover has one of the most accurate blurbs I’ve read in a long time: “What are the words and expressions that irk, intrigue and provoke John Humphrys?”

Amusingly, the book is subtitled ‘How Language Reveals The Way We Live Now’. I hypothesise that this subtitle was not submitted by Mr Humphrys himself. Firstly, I Don’t Think He’d Approve Of Capitalisation Of The First Letter Of Every Word. In fact, he rails against it in the book. Secondly, his narrative does not address ‘how language reveals the way we live now’. Not really. It is just a jolly romp through the modern day use of language.

This is entertaining, engaging, and it makes some interesting points about the development of language. It’s also genuinely funny. He has particularly memorable rants against familiar targets such as “Your M&S” (“The slogan implies that the product or service has been specially designed just for you personally. It hasn’t. The stuff is mass-produced for a mass market and the business – like almost every other large business around the world – is becoming less and less personal.”) and the Inland Revenue (“‘working with the largest customer base of any UK organisation'” is meaningless because the “customers” simply have no choice).

In contrast to Lynne Truss, who, apparently without irony, lamented the decline of formal English in an unnecessarily conversational grammar guide, John Humphrys takes a more reflective and analytical approach to changes in language. His tone is equally conversational and laced with humour, but without the repetitive vitriolic condemnation of the reader typical of Truss. And, in fairness, without the perhaps useful instruction that Truss provides.

Humphrys is easy to read. Perhaps it’s the way his voice is imprinted on my brain from years of listening to Radio 4, but his book reads almost as if one is in the room with him, and listening to a well-argued, highly entertaining monologue. And, unlike lesser authors, Humphrys is not trying to argue that misplaced apostrophes are the cause of social decline: He takes a reasoned approach to his arguments, which makes his conclusions seem all the more valid.

All-in-all, Beyond Words is a great read. It’s interesting and informative, genuinely funny, and short enough not to labour its points. I’d highly recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in the English language.

Beyond Words is available now from amazon.co.uk in paperback and on Kindle.

This week’s recommendation is an absolutely brilliant article from Fast Company profiling Jeff Dunn, a former Coca Cola executive who swapped marketing sugar water for marketing carrots… with some success! The article’s by Douglas McGray.

This picture is actually from yesterday morning, when Newcastle City Council measured the temperature as -8.4c and sent out a warning to motorists about grit being ineffective at such low temperatures. In the decade I’ve lived in the North East, I don’t ever remember that happening before!

This morning, it’s actually not too bad here. We’ve had little fresh snowfall overnight, though there’s a fair amount of frozen snow lying on the ground as there has been for some time now – though that’s not terribly unusual at this time of year. I believe the band of heavy snow is expected to affect us more tomorrow than today.

A little over twelve months ago, I was asked on a discussion forum to make predictions about the retail sector in 2012. I’d forgotten all about this until today, when somebody pointed out my prescience!

On 30th December 2011, I posted the following (forgive the reformatting!):

M&S is going to have a bad year: They seem to be doing everything humanly possible to disassemble the formula that brought them back from the brink a few years ago. On the other hand, WHSmith’s profits are up, even if their sales are down – I reckon they can ride out the storm for a while. My predictions for chains that will collapse are JJB (frankly surprised they’re still around); Past Times (feels like it’s had its day, so to speak); and Mothercare / ELC (already pulling out of town centres, doesn’t bode well).

And, indeed, M&S had a bad year, WHSmith did reasonably well, Past Times closed, JJB closed, and Mothercare is on the brink.

You might think I’d feel proud of my amazing predictive abilities, but in fact, I feel mainly freaked out – especially since my history with predictions isn’t great. It’s also weird to think that I correctly predicted thousands of job losses – it gives me a creepy sort of guilt, as though I’m somehow responsible.

So given the discomfort I’ve inadvertently caused myself, the only prediction I’ll make for this year is that the economy will fully recover with no more companies folding, and unemployment will hit record low levels. Though if that turns out to be true as well, I might displace Mr Soult as the media’s favourite north east retail analyst!

Nick Robinson’s Live from Downing Street is a thoroughly enjoyable romp through the history of the relationship between politicians and the media, from the very beginnings of Parliament to the present day. It’s part historical and part autobiographical, with the latter part in particular including lots of amusing anecdotes about Robinson’s time as a political journalist. Some of these genuinely made me laugh out loud. It also has a lengthy “last word”, in which Robinson muses on the future of political journalism, and the opportunities and threats offered by introducing to the UK biased broadcasting in the mould of Fox News.

He has an easy writing style making this an easy relaxed read. He sometimes has a slightly peculiar reliance on turns of phrase which fail to accurately communicate what he means to say: for example, there’s a passage where he introduces Gordon Brown’s disastrous flirtations with YouTube by saying that politicians have always been keen to embrace technology to communicate their message – something which he’s spent most of the first two-thirds of the book disproving.

He gives a very eloquent account of the effect of the plurality of media in the broadest sense meaning that people surround themselves with messages that support their world viewpoint, and the effect this in turn has on perceptions of bias at the BBC. This is something I’ve been banging on about on Twitter for ages, in a far less coherent manner, and it was interesting to see that the same thoughts have occurred to that organisation’s Political Editor. He also gives an interesting discussion of the nature of bias and impartiality, which I very much enjoyed.

There isn’t an awful lot of new stuff in this book. I think many people who follow politics in detail are probably aware of the history of the BBC and the historic developments in the relationship between journalists and the press. But Robinson presents all of this with such a clear narrative and in such a clear way that I still found myself very engaged with the content even when he was describing events I knew well.

The lengthy discussion of recent events and media figures – phone hacking being perhaps the most notable example – will probably make this book date quite quickly. Indeed, the mentions of Leveson “whose report has not been published at the time of writing” already make it feel a little behind the times, particularly since Leveson’s report covers much of the same ground discussed by Robinson.

Either way, this is well worth a read, and comes highly recommended.

Live from Downing Street is available now from amazon.co.uk in hardback and on Kindle.

Lectures can, in short, bring a subject alive and make it more meaningful. Alternatively, they can kill it.

A true, but not altogether encouraging, sentiment in this excellent 2001 paper by Brown and Manogue, sent to me by Newcastle Medical School to help me prepare my first big scary lecture for their students.

The snow has arrived in greater measure overnight… and now I feel like I don’t want to leave the house! In fairness, it’s not actually all that deep this morning – note the clear tyre tracks in the photo. Anyway, work awaits, so I guess I’ll have to venture out!

As I head to bed, we’ve got just the lightest of dustings of snow here in Newcastle. But with an amber weather alert in place for a rather heavier dumping over the next 24hrs or so, who knows I’ll be battling through on my way to and from work tomorrow!