When They Go Low, We Go High

by Philip Collins 4th Estate 432pp £16.99 The Week Bookshop £14.99

Philip Collins, a Times leader writer and former chief speechwriter to Tony Blair, is “no stranger to the art of persuasion”, said Alex Markley in The Spectator. In this “joy of a book”, he uses his experience to “run the rule over 25 great and influential speeches”, from Cicero’s attack on Mark Antony in 44BC to the 2012 victory speech of Barack Obama (pictured). The book goes much further than most “great speech” anthologies, “drilling down on a technical level” to show, for instance, how Abraham Lincoln “channelled Pericles” in his Gettysburg Address. Collins is also refreshingly iconoclastic, exposing the “discordant notes” in JFK’S much-lauded inaugural address and criticising William Wilberforce’s most famous anti-slavery speech for its uninspiring conclusion. For those who like “nothing better than to marvel at effective use of an anaphoric tricolon”, this book is an “absolute must”.

And it’s not just about great speeches, said Gerard Degroot in The Times. Collins, more ambitiously, aims to “mount a vigorous defence of the practice of politics” in an age dominated by fear and cynicism, arguing that through its ability to inspire people, oratory is crucial to a well-functioning democracy. He even goes so far as to suggest that great speeches are “the solution to Trump”. Unsurprisingly, Collins is “wonderfully sharp and well informed” on what makes a speech successful, said Craig Brown in The Mail on Sunday. It should always have a central message, he insists, and not be rambling or unnecessarily repetitive. A pity, then, that he “does not always follow his own advice”: at 400odd pages, this book is “overlong”. While Collins is “heartfelt” in his belief that “rhetoric is a true servant of democracy”, this argument would have been more effective had it not been made “over and over again”.