Max Atkinson's Blog

This is a sequel to yesterday's post on How NOT to introduce a speaker , and shows some more examples of the 'clap on the name techn...

I mentioned in an earlier post an observation, first reported in my book Our Masters’ Voices , about there being a standard or ‘normal’ b...

After recent posts about how British politicians behave in interviews, I couldn't help being impressed by President Obama's cool and...

I f you’ve been following the debate about how important body language and non-verbal communication really are, you shouldn't conclude ...

Speaking in Berlin in 1963, President Kennedy showed how a few words in the local language is a sure fire way of winning approval (in the ...

Soon after I started studying applause in political speeches, it emerged that there is a ‘normal’ burst of applause that lasts for about eig...

The oratory of Martin Luther King was clearly derived from the style of preaching he had grown up with in the Southern Baptist Church. That ...

I’ve warned Gordon Brown and his speechwriters before ( HERE ) that it’s not a good idea to lift lines from other people’s speeches. This wa...

A lot of commentators have been complaining that President Obama’s inaugural address was a bit short on memorable phrases, and there’s a ver...

A point I made a couple of days ago was that bursts of applause can be used to identify which points in a speech an audience liked best. If ...

When I first started studying bursts of applause in political speeches thirty years ago, some people couldn’t see the point; others thought ...

If there’s one thing that irks me about speeches by American presidents, it’s their tendency to overstate the case for their country being t...

With pageants like the annual trooping the colour and state opening of parliament by the Queen, occasional royal weddings, state funerals an...

Given that Barack Obama is such a brilliant orator, it might seem a bit presumptuous to offer any suggestions for his inaugural address next...