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(Spoiler alert: being a princess is not all it’s cracked up to be!) Nearly every little girl dreams of being a princess, and there are very few daddies who don’t play along. Living in a castle, wooed by dragon-slaying charming princes, eating what you want when you want, and having sleepovers with all the other…

We’ll miss her, won’t we? For nearly all of us, Queen Elizabeth II has always been there, just like the sun and the moon and the morning mist. Elizabeth became Queen in difficult circumstances. Her father, George VI, died far too young. Lung cancer. He had been a good king, decent, inspiring, courageous, but even…

Paul Collins, writing about autists, says “Autists are the ultimate square pegs, and the problem with pounding a square peg into a round hole is not that the hammering is hard work. It’s that you’re destroying the peg.” Collins’ dictum brought me up short, not because I’ve had that much experience with the autistic, but…

Jonathan Liew, in the Guardian, January 9, 2023 wrote of the freshly retired Welsh football phenomenon Gareth Bale. Here’s part of what he said. Of course Bale always played to win. But in the 30-yard screamers and lightning bursts of speed, you can spot something else there too: a young man playing for the sake…

I’ll admit to shedding a few tears when, at the end of Brian Mulroney’s funeral they played a clip of himself singing We’ll Meet Again in his lovely Irish baritone, or earlier a few lines from Danny Boy. I’ll also admit that although I’m not a Tory, I voted consistently for him, and regard him…

My friend and speaking colleague Mark Gasparotto, former Canadian army colonel, puts it bluntly: “Leadership training is an investment, not an expense.” Having led troops “outside the wire” in Afghanistan, he knows whereof he speaks. He could not be more correct about leadership training, in fact about any developmental exercise which enhances the value and…