Posts in Culture
How to Write: Lessons From a Physicist

Safi believes that writing has three components: style, story and process. He achieves style and story through having a good process, which he breaks down into five “hats”, or forms of behaviour: two in the research and reading phase, and three in the writing phase.

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Lessons in Leadership from General Stanley McChrystal

American General Stanley McChrystal commanded America’s Joint Special Operations Command and ISAF. He was the pre-eminent soldier of his generation and has written three books. Leadership is the theme that runs through all three of them.

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Walking The Nile With Levison Wood

In June/July 2014, I joined Levison Wood for the Sudan leg of his Walking The Nile expedition. Due to security restrictions, we had to cross the Bayuda Desert at the edge of the Sahara. I wrote the article up for Etihad Inflight Magazine, and you can read it here.

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Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem

The play is an exploration of belonging and Englishness - the theme of modern Englishness captured me - soul-less housing estates, disenfranchised youths, bureaucratic council officers - what is England? Byron's character taps into a sense of mystery and longing for something more interesting than the meaningless of existence that simmers beneath the surface of modern life; it taps into the hunger for mythos rather than the logos that society tells us should be the only concern.

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Are You Talking Too Much Shit?

Being a man who writes of (and occasionally participates in) fairly masculine adventures, I thought I'd explore this concept. The inference is two-fold: if talking is girly, then solitude must be manly; and solitude results in achievement.

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