Book Review: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Jay Fowler

Warning: spoiler alert

This book had some good ideas about memory. Specifically, when we revisit or narrate an old memory again and again, does that memory start to take a life of its own which is distinct from the original event? Other than this, the book was pretty okay: Not too great, not too bad. It's the story of the protagonist (Rosemary) and her family struggling to come to terms with the "loss" of her sister. The final page – when Rosemary finally meets her sister after years apart – was strong:

"I didn't know what she was thinking or feeling. Her body had become unfamiliar to me. And yet, at the very same time, I recognized everything about her."

Book Review: Empire, by Niall Ferguson

I found this book to be an engaging and educational read. As someone with very limited knowledge of the British Empire, I found the pacing and level of detail in this book to be just right. I thought the author did a good job of telling the story of the British Empire without getting into too much discussion about whether the actions of the British were good or bad or justified. After reading this book, I definitely feel I have a decent surface-level understanding of the origins of the empire in the 1600s, the spread and growth of the empire through the 1700s and 1800s, and the eventual demise of the empire in the 1900s. Also, as the subtitle of the book promised, I definitely feel I have a better understanding of how the modern world has been shaped by the Empire.

Here's a brief timeline of the standout events which the author discussed in the book:  

• 1600s (first half)
• English Civil War.
• Increased migration of Brits to America.
• 1600s (second half)
• Pirating the ships and islands of more successful empires like the Spanish.
• 1700s (first half)
• The rise of sugar imports into Britain.
• Growth in the number of slave exports from Africa to America on British ships.
• 1700s (second half)
• The rise of re-exporting stimulants like sugar, caffeine and tobacco to continental Europe.
• Britain emerges the victor in the Seven Years War over France.
• American War of Independence.
• Increased transportation of British convicts to Australia.
• 1800s (first half)
• Slavery is made illegal in British territory.
• The rise of Christian missionary groups and missionaries operating in British colonies.
• 1800s (second half)
• The Indian Mutiny.
• The Industrial Revolution shrinks the world with the construction of bigger, faster ships and the invention of the telegraph.
• Construction of the HMS Warrior battleship is completed.
• The first meeting of the Indian National Congress is held. (Though initially intended to defuse Indian disaffection with the British Raj, Congress would become the crucible of Indian nationalism.)
• A third of Africa is annexed to the British Empire.
• 1900s (first half)
• The Boer War is fought (against the Boer states) for control of South Africa. (Survivors were herded into concentration camps.)
• World War I
• World War II
• 1990s (second half)
• End of the Empire.

Lastly, here are some quotes from the book:

Pirates: "... when an expedition went wrong – as when Sir Humphrey Gilbert's expedition to the West Indies foundered off Ireland in 1578 – the survivors resorted to piracy to cover their expenses."

Pirates: "The Empire had begun with the stealing of gold; it progressed with the cultivation of sugar."

Sugar Rush: "The rise of the British Empire, it might be said, had less to do with the Protestant work ethic or English individualism than with the British sweet tooth."

Sugar Rush: "Taken together, the new drugs gave English society an almighty hit; the Empire, it might be said, was built on a huge sugar, caffeine and nicotine rush – a rush nearly everyone could experience."

Sugar Rush: "Indian textiles – which even a servant like [Daniel] Defoe's 'plain country Joan' could afford – meant that the tea-swilling English not only felt better; they looked better too."

Men of War: "... they [the Indians] allowed themselves to be divided – and, ultimately, ruled."

Men of War: "... no matter how devoted they [the British] might be to Indian culture, their aim was always to transfer their profits back home to Britain. The notorious 'drain' of capital from India to Britain had begun."

The Taxman: "British power in India continued to be based on the sword. War after war extended British rule even further..."

The Taxman: "They had robbed the Spaniards, copied the Dutch, beaten the French and plundered the Indians. Now they ruled supreme."

Plantation: "Here was one of the key differences between British America and Latin America. Spanish settlers tended to be solo male encomanderos... the majority of male Iberian migrants therefore took their sexual partners from the (dwindling) indigenous or the (rapidly growing) slave population. The result within a few generations was a substantial mixed-race population of mestizos and mulattos (Hispanic and African). British settlers in North America were not only much more numerous; they were encouraged to bring their wives and children with them, thus preserving their culture more or less intact. In North America, as in Northern Ireland, therefore, British colonisation was a family affair. As a consequence, New England really was a new England, far more than New Spain would ever be a new Spain."

Plantation: "There were probably around 2 million indigenous people in the territory of the modern United States in 1500. By 1700 the number was 750,000. By 1820 there were just 325,000."

Black and White: "We tend to think of the British Empire as a phenomenon of white migration, yet between 1662 and 1807 nearly three and a half million Africans came to the New World as slaves transported in British ships. That was over three times the number of white migrants in the same period."

Black and White: "By 1770... Britain's Atlantic empire seemed to have found a natural equilibrium. The triangular trade between Britain, West Africa and the Caribbean kept the plantations supplied with labour. The mainland American colonies kept them supplied with victuals. Sugar and tobacco streamed back to Britain, a substantial proportion for re-export to the Continent. And the profits from these New World commodities oiled the wheels of the Empire's Asian commerce."

Civil War: "... it is the great paradox of the American Revolution... that the ones who revolted against British rule were the best-off of all Britain's colonial subjects."

Civil War: "It was the constitutional principle – the right of the British parliament to levy taxes on the American colonists without their consent – that was the true bone of contention."

Civil War: "... they [the American colonists] wanted their assemblies to be put on a par with the Westminster Parliament..."

Civil War: "It has sometimes been argued that in gaining Canada in the Seven Years War, Britain had undermined her position in America. Without the French threat, why should the thirteen colonies stay loyal?"

Civil War: "... the loss of America had the unforeseen effect of securing Canada for the Empire, thanks to the flood of English-speaking Loyalists who, together with new British settlers, would eventually reduce the French Quebecois to a beleaguered minority."

Civil War: "The irony is that having won their independence in the name of liberty, the American colonists went on to perpetuate slavery in the southern states... By contrast, within a few decades of having lost the American colonies, the British abolished first the slave trade and then slavery itself throughout their Empire."

Mars: "The great paradox of Australian history is that what started out as a colony populated by people whom Britain had thrown out proved to be so loyal to the British Empire for so long. America had begun as a combination of tobacco plantation and Puritan utopia, a creation of economic and religious liberty, and ended up as a rebel republic. Australia started out as a jail, the very negation of liberty. Yet the more reliable colonists turned out to be not the Pilgrims but the prisoners."

Mars: "... transportation there [New South Wales in Australia] was no longer a deterrent to crime, but rather a free passage to a new life, with the prospect of a golden handshake in the form of a land grant at the end of one's sentence."

Mars: "The colonists brought with them contamination in the form of infectious diseases to which the Aborigines had no resistance, and cultivation which implied the exclusion of the nomadic tribes from their ancestral hunting grounds."

Mars: "The case of the Aborigines was a striking example of the way attitudes diverged over distance. The British in London regarded the problem quite differently from the British in Sydney. Here was the very essence of the imperial dilemma. How could an empire that claimed to be founded on liberty justify overruling the wishes of colonists when they clashed with those of a very distant legislature?"

From Clapham to Freetown: "This was the birth of a new kind of politics, the politics of the pressure group. Thanks to the work of zealous activists armed only with pens, paper and moral indignation, Britain had turned against slavery."

From Clapham to Freetown: "Here was a measure of the strength of the campaign against the slave trade: that it could mobilise not only legislators to ban the trade, but also the Royal Navy to enforce the ban."

From Clapham to Freetown: "For two hundred years the Empire had engaged in trade, warfare and colonisation. It had exported British goods, capital and people. Now, however, it aspired to export British culture."

From Clapham to Freetown: "There could not be a greater contrast between the missionaries' motives and those of previous generations of empire-builders, the swashbucklers, the slavers and the settlers."

The Clash of Civilisations: "... by the 1830s and 1840s 40 percent of the total value of Indian exports took the form of opium..."

The Clash of Civilisations: "The rock on which British rule was founded was the Indian Army."

The Clash of Civilisations: "When Delhi fell to 'British' forces, those forces were mostly Indian."

The Clash of Civilisations: "In the time between [David] Livingstone's death in 1873 and [Henry Morton] Stanley's death in 1904 around a third of Africa would be annexed to the British Empire; virtually all the rest would be taken over by a handful of other European powers. And it is only against this background of political domination that the conversion of sub-Saharan Africa to Christianity can be understood."

The Annihilation of Distance: "It is indeed one of the richer ironies of the Victorian value-system that the same navy that was deployed to abolish slave trade was also active in expanding the narcotics trade."

The Annihilation of Distance: "From 1879, the date of the second British attempt to invade and control Afghanistan, until the third attempt in 1919, Britain and Russia conducted the world's first Cold War along the North-West Frontier. But the spies in this Cold War were surveyors, for whoever mapped the frontier first stood a good chance of controlling it."

Cape to Cairo: "Within twenty short years after 1880... ten thousand African tribal kingdoms were transformed into just forty states, of which thirty-six were under direct European control. Never in human history had there been such drastic redrawing of the map of a continent."

Cape to Cairo: "Across Africa the story repeated itself: chiefs hoodwinked, tribes dispossessed, inheritances signed away with a thumbprint or a shaky cross and any resistance mown down by the Maxim gun. One by one the nations of Africa were subjugated... By the beginning of the new century [i.e. the 20th century], the carve-up was complete."

Greater Britain; "Around two and a half million British nationals emigrated to the Empire between 1900 and 1914, three-quarters of them to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In most cases, emigration substantially increased their incomes and reduced their tax burdens."

Weltkrieg: "In the autumn of 1914, around a third of British forces in France were from India; by the end of the war more than a million Indians had served overseas, almost as many as came from the four white Dominions put together."

Weltkrieg: "... the Indians were not reluctant conscripts [to fight for the British in the first world war]; they were in fact all volunteers, and enthusiastic volunteers at that."

The Transfer of Power: "Once the British had made up their minds to get out [from their various colonies], they aimed to catch the first boat home, regardless of the consequences in their former colonies."

The Transfer of Power: "In the end, the British sacrificed her Empire to stop the Germans, Japanese and Italians from keeping theirs. Did not that sacrifice alone expunge all the Empire's other sins?"

4-day trip to West Sussex and Isle of Wight in the south of England

I had a super pleasurable four-day trip down to the south of England with family last week. We were a group of eight and travelled in two cars from London.

Below is the itinerary of our trip which includes Ordnance Survey grid references for places which we stopped at. If you need a reminder of how to read Ordnance Survey grid references, check out this article or this video. Pro tip: you can plug an Ordnance Survey grid reference into the UK Grid Reference Finder web app and link out from there to Google Maps or Ordnance Survey.

Itinerary

Day 1 morning: We loaded up our cars and started our journey southwards.

Day 1 early afternoon: We stopped at Kithurst Hill Car Park in the South Downs (TQ 071 125) and did a short walk eastwards to Kithurst Hill (TQ 082 125), then southwards to join the South Downs Way (TQ 082 123), and then north-westwards along the South Downs Way back to our car.

Day 1 late afternoon: We stopped at Pulborough Bridge (TQ 045 185) and did some canoeing and kayaking for an hour along River Arun. We hired our canoes and kayaks via Fluid Adventures. Be sure to book beforehand.

Day 1 evening: We drove to our accommodation in Bersted which is just a touch northwards from the coastal town of Bognor Regis and we rested for the night. We booked our accommodation via Airbnb.

Day 2 morning: We had a slow, relaxed morning knowing that we'd have to get up early for the next two mornings.

Day 2 early afternoon: We drove down to Climping Car Park (TQ 005 007) and walked westwards along the coast. The route was a nice mixture of beach to our left and fields to our right.

Day 2 late afternoon: We drove westwards to West Wittering Beach Car Park (SZ 769 982). Lucky for us the weather was cloudy and forecasted to rain so the beach was nice and quiet. Note that the car park is pre-book only.

Day 2 evening: We drove back to our accommodation and rested for the night.

Day 3 early morning: We got up early, headed for Portsmouth and caught our 9:40am ferry to the Isle of Wight. We booked our ferry via Wightlink and it was around £40 each way per car.

Day 3 late morning: We exited the ferry at Fishbourne and drove to a couple of viewpoints on the Isle of Wight's eastern coast. We stopped first at Bembridge Down Car Park (SZ 626 860) and second at Culver Down Car Park (SZ 636 856).

Day 3 early afternoon: We drive clockwise along the coast to Shanklin where we stopped for some scones and tea at the Old Thatch Teashop. Note that you have to call in and book beforehand.

Day 3 late afternoon: We continued our drive clockwise along the coast up to The Needles Car Park (SZ 307 854) from where we walked the stairs down to the beach. We sat by the beach for a while and then caught the chair lift back up to the top. The chair lift costs £4 per person each way.

Day 3 evening: We got back to our cars and drove straight through to Fishbourne just in time to check in for our 6:40pm return ferry. We exited the ferry at Portsmouth, picked up some food from Umami Street Food and returned to our accommodation.

Day 4 morning: We tidied up and checked out from our accommodation.

Day 4 early afternoon: We drove to Brighton and stayed put in and around Brighton Palace Pier. Again, it was a cloudy day and forecasted to rain, so we got to enjoy the beach in relative quiet. Note that Pay & Display parking in Brighton is super expensive so you're best booking a parking slot beforehand on JustPark or using one of the car parks listed on the Brighton & Hove Cark Parks web page.

Day 4 late afternoon: We drove back to London.

Book Review: The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg

This was a decent read. The author does a fine job of intertwining stories and theory. The key takeaways for me were the definition of "habit" and the concept of a "habit loop". A habit is defined as "the choices that all of us deliberately make at some point, and then stop thinking about but continue doing, often every day." A habit loop, on the other hand, is defined as consisting of cues, cravings, routines and rewards: a cue creates a craving and triggers a routine which leads to a reward, which ties back to the cue.

The author argues that once a habit loop is formed, it's difficult to change the cues and rewards that drive our cravings and it's easier instead to focus on changing our routines within the habit loop. The author further argues that long-term change is only truly possible with belief and belief is a whole lot of easier to obtain with the help of a group or community. Alcoholics Anonymous was cited as an example of these points.

As well as the methods of Alcoholics Anonymous, the standout examples from the book for me were those of how marketers use this knowledge of cues and rewards to create cravings within us. There was the example of Pepsodent toothpaste advertisements which target the craving for that cool, tingling sensation in our mouths after brushing above and beyond the craving for clean teeth. There was the example of Febreze spray advertisements which target the craving to make everything smell as nice as it looks above and beyond the craving to hide bad smells. Lastly, there was the example of Cinnabon and how their stores are located away from other food stores so that the smell of cinnamon rolls reach us early and so that the craving for one is ignited well before we see the store.

Below are some quotes from the book.

"When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making. It stops working so hard, or diverts focus to other tasks." 

"... habits emerge without our permission... families don't usually intend to eat fast food on a regular basis. What happens is that a once a month pattern slowly becomes once a week, and then twice a week... until the kids are consuming an unhealthy amount of hamburgers and fries." 

"Every McDonald's... looks the same – the company deliberately tries to standardise stores' architecture and what employees say to customers, so everything is a consistent cue to trigger eating routines." 

"Studies of people who have successfully started new exercise routines... show they are more likely to stick with a workout plan if they choose a specific cue, such as running as soon as they get home from work, and a clear reward, such as beer or an evening of guilt-free television." 

"... habits are so powerful [because they] create neurological cravings. Most of the time, these cravings emerge so gradually that we're not really aware they exist, so we're often blind to their influence. But as we associate cues with certain rewards, a subconscious craving emerges in our brains that starts the habit loop spinning." 

"... to overpower the habit, we must recognise which craving is driving the behaviour." 

"... a cue and a reward, on their own, aren't enough for a new habit to last. Only when your brain starts expecting the reward – craving the endorphins or sense of accomplishment – will it become automatic to lace up your jogging shoes each morning. The cue, in addition to triggering a routine, must also trigger a craving for the reward to come." 

"Claude Hopkins [the main behind the Pepsodent toothpaste commercials in the early 1900s] wasn't selling beautiful teeth. He was selling a sensation. Once people craved that cool tingling [in their mouths] – once they equated it with cleanliness – brushing became a habit." 

"Shampoo doesn't have to foam, but we add foaming chemicals because people expect it each time they wash their hair. Same thing with laundry detergent. And toothpaste... There's no cleaning benefit, but people feel better when there's a bunch of suds around their mouth." 

"Cravings are what drive habits. And figuring out how to spark a craving makes creating a new habit easier." 

"... you can never truly extinguish bad habits. Rather, to change a habit, you must keep the old cue, and deliver the old reward, but insert a new routine. That's the rule: If you use the same cue, and provide the same reward, you can shift the routine and change the habit. Almost any behaviour can be transformed if the cue and reward stay the same." 

"In order to offer alcoholics the same rewards they get at a bar, Alcoholics Anonymous has built a system of meetings and companionship – the 'sponsor' each member works with – that strives to offer as much escape, distraction and catharsis as a Friday night bender. If someone needs relief, they can get it from talking to their sponsor or attending a group gathering, rather than toasting a drinking buddy." 

"Often, we don't really understand the cravings driving our behaviours until we look for them." 

"If you identify the cues and rewards, you can change the routine. At least, most of the time. For some habits, however, there's one other ingredient that's necessary: belief." 

"... for habits to permanently change, people must believe that change is feasible." 

"Belief is easier when it occurs within a community." 

"... a habit cannot be eradicated – it must, instead, be replaced." 

"... habits are most malleable when the Golden Rule of habit change is applied: If we keep the same cue and the same reward, a new routine can be inserted... For a habit to stay changed, people must believe change is possible. And most often, that belief only emerges with the help of a group." 

"If you want to change a habit, you must find an alternative routine, and your odds of success go up dramatically when you commit to changing as part of a group." 

"When people start habitually exercising, even as infrequently as once a week, they start changing other, unrelated patterns in their lives, often unknowingly. Typically, people who exercise start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. It's not completely clear why. But for many people, exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change." 

"... willpower is the single most important keystone habit for individual success." 

"Self-discipline has a bigger effect on academic performance than does intellectual talent... If you knew how to avoid the temptation of a marshmallow as a preschooler, it seemed, you also knew how to get yourself to class on time and finish your homework once you got older, as well as how to make friends and resist peer pressure." 

"... once you understand that habits can change, you have the freedom – and the responsibility – to remake them. Once you understand that habits can be rebuilt, the power of habit becomes easier to grasp, and the only option left is to get to work."

Book Review: Leading, by Alex Ferguson

I thought this book complimented Alex Ferguson's autobiography nicely. Whereas his autobiography offers his thoughts on the players who he managed over the years (what made some players good and others great), this book offers insights into how he got the best out of his players. What really made this book excel in my opinion is its structure: it's nicely broken down into small 5-10 page chapters and the chapters are nicely grouped into themes. After reading the two books, I can't say I fully understand what made Alex Ferguson stand out singularly from other managers but I can definitely say I've learnt a lot from both books.

Below are some quotes from the book:

"... I gradually began to realise that teaching bears some similarities to football management. Perhaps the most important element of each activity is to inspire a group of people to perform at their very best."

Listening: "There's a reason that God gave us two ears, two eyes and one mouth. It's so you can listen and watch twice as much as you talk. Best of all, listening costs you nothing."

Watching: "... there are two forms of observation: the first is on the detail and the second is on the big picture."

Watching: "... you can see a lot more when you are not in the thick of things... If you are in the middle of a training session with a whistle in your mouth, your entire focus is on the ball. When I stepped back and watched from the sidelines, my field of view was widened and I could absorb the whole session, as well as pick up on players' moods, energy and habits."

"It takes courage to say, 'Let me think about it'."

Discipline: "If you can assemble a team of eleven talented players who concentrate intently during training sessions, take care of their diet and bodies, get enough sleep and show up on time, then you are almost halfway to winning a trophy. It is always astonishing how many clubs are incapable of doing this."

Work rate: "It was no accident that players like Ronaldo, Beckham, the Neville brothers, Cantona, Scholes, Giggs and Rooney would all have to be dragged off the training ground. They all just had a built-in desire to excel and improve."

Drive: "For me drive means a combination of a willingness to work hard, emotional fortitude, enormous powers of concentration and a refusal to admit defeat."

Drive: "... a winning drive is like a magical potion that can spread from one person to another."

Conviction: "I cannot imagine how anyone, without firm convictions and deep inner beliefs, can be an effective leader."

Conviction: "It's one thing to have confidence in your own abilities. It's a completely different challenge to instil confidence in others."

Conviction: "As we reassembled for the following season, I kept reiterating that United expected to win absolutely every game we played. It didn't matter whether our opponent was the reigning Premier League, or Champions League champions, or a fourth division team we'd drawn in the FA Cup. I was just able to keep reinforcing the ideology that no club was bigger than United – no matter whether their owner controlled all the oil in the Persian Gulf, or every coal-mine in Russia."

Preparation: "Part of the pursuit of excellence involves eliminating as many surprises as possible because life is full of the unexpected. That's what our scouts, our youth system and the innumerable training sessions were all about."

Preparation: "... ultimately no battles are won by mounting a sterling defence. The way to win battles, wars and games is by attacking and overrunning the opposing side. So I would always dwell on our opponents' weaknesses – partly to exploit them and partly to impart in my players a sense of what was possible."

Pipeline: "When I joined Aberdeen in 1978 we had two scouts; by the time I left we had 17 scouts, who were responsible for identifying promising youngsters who lived in Scotland. The result was fabulous."

Pipeline: "Youngsters can inject a fantastic spirit in an organisation and a youngster never forgets the person or organisation that gave him his first big chance. He will repay it with a loyalty that lasts a lifetime."

Pipeline: "For young players, nothing is impossible, and they will try and run through a barbed-wire fence, while older players will try to find the gate."

Pipeline: "Every generation also raises the level of the game, because they stand atop more shoulders than the previous one."

Teamwork: "Balance is the key to every team. It is impossible to win a football game with eleven goalkeepers or with a group of people with identical talents."

Teamwork: "In football eight players, not eleven, win games, because everybody has off-days and it's almost impossible to make eleven people play to perfection simultaneously."

Teamwork: "I was always on the lookout for new players for the first-team squad... Whenever we came across a player of unusual ability, the unspoken question was whether he would serve us better than the current incumbent... Another exercise that I used to employ to keep myself honest was to ask myself which member of our first-team squad would be able to command a starting place with Real Madrid or AC Milan or whatever team happened to be Champions of Europe that year. That little mental exercise always illuminated our weaker spots."

Excellence: "Whenever we bought a player I would make a point of sitting down with him and explaining exactly what was expected of him at a club like Manchester United."

Inspiring: "You don't get the best out of people by hitting them with an iron rod. You do so by gaining their respect, getting them accustomed to triumphs and convincing them that they are capable of improving their performance."

Inspiring: "It turns out that the two most powerful words in the English language are, 'Well done'."

Inspiring: "Anyone who is in charge of a group of people has got to have a strong personality. That doesn't mean dominating every conversation or speaking at the top of your voice. Some quiet people have very strong personalities and rooms fall silent when they have something to say. A strong personality is an expression of inner strength and fortitude."

Inspiring: "... I always tried to couch [criticisms] in a positive way. For example, I would tell a young player that he would be far more effective if he passed the ball more. That message is more likely to be absorbed than barking, 'You're never going to be any good if you keep hogging he ball'."

Inspiring: "There is no benefit in engaging in public hangings. It just doesn't buy you anything. It humiliates the victim and does not do much to encourage those around him."

Inspiring: "While not always succeeding in the heat of the moment, I would try to reserve my severest comments for a private session with a player."

Inspiring: "I would always try to meld criticism with support by saying, 'You know you are capable of better. What were you thinking?'"

Speaking: "I made a habit of never going around issuing reminders to individual players. It just plants the seeds of doubt in their minds and they are left wondering whether the manager trusts them. Similarly, I never felt it made any sense to be perpetually barking instructions at players during games. If you have to resort to that, it means that you have not prepared or communicated your plan correctly, or you do not trust the players to do what they are supposed to do."

Speaking: "There are some managers who will enter a dressing room at half-time with a pack of notes. When they talk to the players they will use their notes as prompts. I cannot imagine how that is an effective way to communicate. If you have command and control of your subject, you don't need notes. No player is going to believe that someone is in control of his material, or is an authority on a subject, if he has to keep resorting to notes. I relied on my memory and my own assessment and, that way, when I was talking to the players, I was able to maintain eye contact. I'm sure I got some stuff wrong. I'd miss a deflection or a foul but, in the grand scheme of things, those tiny details don't count. It's the message, the command of that message and its delivery that pack the punch. Everyone has their own style, but using notes when trying to motivate people is not mine."

Answering: "The journalists didn't own the press conferences. I did."

Control: "... a display of temper is more effective if used sparingly."

Control: "If you look at all my teams it was evident that they enjoyed playing and they tended to express themselves in an uninhibited fashion. People do not do that if they are quaking in their boots or if their boss has made them afraid of their own shadows."

Control: "Harsh outbursts and temper tantrums can, when used sparingly, have an effect, but it's a negative and corrosive way to run anything. It's far better to give people a belief in themselves, and faith in the direction of their organisation..."

Control: "I was the puppet master, not the control freak."

Delegation: "... working with, and through, others is by far the most effective way to do things – assuming, of course, that they understand what you want and are keen to follow."

Delegation: "... my job was different. It was to set very high standards. It was to help everyone else believe they could do things that they didn't think they were capable of. It was to chart a course that had not been pursued before. It was to make everyone understand that the impossible was possible. That's the difference between leadership and management."

Delegation: "When you're a manager, it's vital to care about the details but it's equally important to understand that there isn't enough time in the day to check on everything."

Delegation: "On the whole it is better to explain to the people around you that you care about little details, but that it's their job to attend to them."

Delegation: "When I hired someone to do something I trusted them to do it. I depended on them to get on with their job and come to me with any problems."

Decision-making: "During my time at United I got rid of several people who could not make decisions. I could never deal with people who were wishy-washy or whose judgement rested on the opinion of the last person they had talked to. They just made my life harder."

Buying: "Any leader is a salesman – and he has to sell to the inside of his organisation and to the outside. Anyone who aspires to be a great leader needs to excel at selling his ideas and aspirations to others. Sometimes you have to persuade people to do things they don't want to do, or to sell them on the idea that they can achieve something they had not dreamed about."

Frugality: "... my upbringing always inclined me towards building rather than buying. I suppose I was more of what my son Mark, in his line of work, would call a 'value investor'."

Brokers: "I was struck when I read The Snowball, the biography of Warren Buffet by Alice Schroeder, to learn of his distrust of investment bankers. I feel about football agents the way Mr Buffet feels about bankers – they are what he calls 'money shufflers'."

Data overload: "I'm sometimes amazed by how people get fixated on information. It's like standing in a hospital room staring at the numbers on the bedside monitors while the patient chokes to death on a chicken sandwich. You have to consider the human element of life and the way that circumstances and chance can upset everything – even the most accurate and clearly reported data. Knowing the heart-rate of a player and doing all the video analysis in the world of his opposite number isn't going to help you if he loses control and gets sent off in the first minute."

Confidentiality: "As my father always said, you only need six people to carry your coffin and, as I have got older, I have become ever more appreciative of that remark."

Book Review: Alex Ferguson – My Autobiography

I found this book to be an enjoyable read. There were glimpses of Alex Ferguson's leadership qualities and style throughout the book but the biggest takeaway for me were his comments on the players that he managed over the years: what made some players great and others truly outstanding. Some players were summarised in a sentence or two (e.g. Dennis Irwin, Gary Pallister, Edwin van der Sar), others explained in a paragraph or two (e.g. Juan Sebastian Veron, Alan Smith, Owen Hargreaves) and a small few explored over an entire chapter (e.g. David Beckham, Christiano Ronaldo, Roy Keane). I'm going out on a whim here but Alex Ferguson's reading and understanding of the people around him – his players especially – could well be the single greatest character trait that propelled him to football management greatness and kept him at the top for so long.

Below are some quotes from the book:

"Sometimes defeats are the best outcomes. To react to adversity is a quality…  fighting back was part of our existence. If you are lackadaisical about defeats you can be sure there will be more to come. Often we would drop two points in a game by the opposition equalising with the last kick of the ball and then go on a six- or seven-game winning run. It was no coincidence."

"It's precisely because I started out in the shipbuilding district of Glasgow that I achieved what I did in football. Origins should never be a barrier to success. A modest start in life can be a help more than a hindrance."

"I always took risks. My plan was: don't panic until the last 15 minutes, keep patient until the last quarter of an hour, then go gung-ho."

"In a crisis you're better just calming people down."

"As long as you don't criticise individual players in public, admonishing the team is fine, not a problem. We can all share in the blame: the manager, his staff, the players. Expressed properly, criticism can be an acceptance of collective responsibility."

"The minute a Manchester United player thought he was bigger than the manager, he had to go… The moment the manager loses his authority, you don't have a club. The players will be running it, and then you're in trouble."

"The name of the manager is irrelevant. The authority is what counts. You cannot have a player taking over the dressing room."

"… I'm a football man, and I don't think you give up football for anything. You can have hobbies… What you don't do is surrender the nuts and bolts of football."

"Because they [England] don't have enough technical and coaching ability, the years from 9 to 16 are thrown away. So how do they compensate? The boys compete, physically. Great attitude, they have. Sleeves up. But they don't produce a player. They are never going to win a World Cup with that system, that mentality."

"… 'Give me a break, Rio [Ferdinand],' I said when I heard he was going to meet that star of the American rap scene. 'Is he going to make you a better centre-half?'…"

"I don't like easy signings. I like having to fight for a player on the grounds that a battle to extricate him means you're acquiring something valuable. I liked it when the selling club were desperate to hang on to their man."

"There is more to the art than the goalkeeping. It's a question of the personality you bring to the job. Not only do keepers have to deal with the business of making saves, they must cope with the process of making errors. You need a big character at Manchester United to handle the aftermath of a high-profile mistake."

"… he [Paolo Di Canio] was the sort of player Manchester United should have: one who can put bums on seats and get people off them, too."

"My advice [to David Gill when he stepped in as chief executive of Manchester United] was, '… don't take on too much. Delegate.'"

"Sometimes you lost one player but gained another of similar merit. We missed out on Paul Gascoigne, for example, but landed Paul Ince. We didn't persuade Alan Shearer to join us but we did sign Eric Cantona… The unifying aim was to develop whichever player we ended up with."

"One sign of a great player is that the opposing fans sing songs against him."

"That's what Alan [Smith] was: a supremely brave lad. He was a good, honest professional, too. What he lacked was the real top quality you need to excel at the biggest clubs."

"A constant in our discussions about young players – in terms of whether they could handle the demands of the Old Trafford crowd and the short patience span of the media – was temperament. Would they grow or shrink in a United shirt?"

"You can't leave your character in the dressing room. It has to come out of that room, down the tunnel and onto the pitch."

"We helped Ronaldo to be the player he was and he helped us recapture the excitement and self-expression of Manchester Untied teams."

"What I always thought about Ronaldo was that, even if he was having a dire game, he would always create three chances. Every game. Look at all the matches. In the mountain of video evidence, you could not find one instance where he failed to create at least three chances. He possessed an unbelievable talent. I can place everything on that list: training performances, strength, courage, skill with either foot, heading ability."

"No matter how many tackles or fouls he absorbed, his whole being expressed defiance: 'You're not going to kick me out of this game. I'm Ronaldo.' He had that wonderful courage and confidence in his ability."

"In all my time, the strong personalities have helped shape the team's actions. Bryan Robson Steve Bruce, Eric Cantona: those players enforced the will of the manager and the club."

"When we were embroiled in an argument once, Roy [Keane] said to me, 'You've changed.' I replied, 'Roy, I will have changed, because today is not yesterday. It's a different world we're in now. We have players from twenty different countries in here. You say I've changed? I hope I have. I would never have survived if I hadn't changed.'"

"I always felt that my best moments as a manager were when I made quick decisions based on irrefutable fact, on conviction."

"… I couldn't take sides against my players. I had to find solutions other than castigating them in public. Sometimes I had to fine or punish them, of course, but I could never let it out of the dressing room. I would have felt I had betrayed the one constant principle of my time as a manager: to defend. No, not to defend, but to protect them from outside judgements."

"The one thing I could never allow was a loss of control, because control was my only saviour."

"The player will be thinking: '1. Can he [the manager] make us winners? 2. Can he make me a better footballer? 3. Is he loyal to us?' These are vital considerations, from the player's side. If the answer to all three is yes, they will tolerate murders."

"I've always found that you have to take the hard road all the time, whether it's popular or not. If you have a worry about one of your staff, that tells you straight away there is a problem. It never made sense to me to go to bed every night worrying when you could do something to cut the problem away."

"… control was my aim… The big decisions you make in those jobs are usually seen by outsiders as exercises in power, when control is really what it's about."

"There's no secret to success in this world.  The key is graft. Malcolm Gladwell's book, 'Outliers: The Story of Success', could just have been called Graft. Hard Graft."

"I admire people who show you their emotions. It shows you they care."

"In those moments of defeat and acceptance, there would be a dawning, for me, of where we needed to go. My feeling was always: 'I don't like this, but we'll have to meet the challenge. We'll have to step up a mark.' It wouldn't have been me, or the club, to submit to apocalyptic thoughts about that being the end, the finish of all our work. We could never allow that."

"We didn't need to win the ball against Arsenal, we needed to intercept it."

"… your character must be strong. To deal with a club like Manchester United, your personality has to be bigger than those of the players. Or, you have to believe it is, to control the whole picture… There is only one boss of Manchester United, and that's the manager."

"Despite the image of me as someone who wanted obedience at all times, I loved people with a bit of devil in them. It was refreshing. You need self-confidence, a bit of nerve. If you're surrounded by people who are scared to express themselves in life, they will be equally frightened when it really matters, on the pitch, in games."

"There was no resting on the status quo, even in the best times. The longer I stayed, the further I looked ahead. Regeneration was an everyday duty."

"… you must tell them the truth. There is nothing wrong with presenting hard facts to a player who has lost his form."

"Faced with the need to confront a player who had performed below our expectation, I might have said: 'That was rubbish that.' But then I would follow it up with, 'For a player of your ability.' That was for picking them back up from the initial blow. Criticise but balance it out with encouragement. 'Why are you doing that? You're better than that.'"

"Saying we always finished the campaign at a higher gallop and with heightened resolve could be classified as a mind game… I did it every year. 'Wait till the second half of the season,' I would say. And it always worked. It crept into the minds of our players and became a nagging fear for the opposition. Second half of the season, United would come like an invasion force, hellfire in their eyes. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy."

"It makes no sense to offer players an easy chance to tell themselves, 'The manager's lost it.' If they lose faith in your knowledge, they lose faith in you. That grasp of the facts must be kept at a high level, for all time. You have to be accurate in what you say to the players."

"I loved it when a journalist asked a big long question because it allowed me time to prepare my answer. The hard ones were the short questions: 'Why were you so bad?' That kind of pithy inquiry can cause you to elongate your response. You stretch it out while you're trying to think, and end up justifying your whole world to them. There's an art to not exposing the weaknesses of your team, which is always your first priority. Always."

"Never give in: that's a great religion, a great philosophy to have. I never gave in. I always thought I could rescue something from any situation."

Walk: Great Monk Wood in Epping Forest

Summary

If you're looking for a super casual walk just a short drive from East London, this one's for you.

Route

The steps for this walk couldn't be simpler:

1. Drive northwards up Epping New Road (also called the A104) and pull into Wake Valley Pond car park.
2. After you park up, walk out of the car park where you just entered from and cross over Epping New Road into the forest on the other side.
3. Walk in an east-south-easterly direction until you're right besides the road named Golding's Hill (also called the A121).
4. Turn and walk in a south-westerly direction along the path named Green Ride (as named in the Maps.me app).
5. Whip around Court Hill and then start to walk northwards back towards your car.

See here for a graphical representation of the route in the Ordnance Survey website and see here for some pictures of the area uploaded to my Flickr account.

Recommended app

For this walk I definitely recommend the Maps.me app over the OS Maps app since none of the paths are marked out for this one in the OS Maps app. Whichever app you decide to use, remember to download an offline map of the area beforehand since there's pretty much zero phone or data reception in the entire area.

What to pack

• Small mat to place over any fallen trees you decide to sit on... to prevent yourself getting a wet bottom.
• Waterproof walking boots so you can splash around at will anywhere in the forest.
• Extra footwear to keep in the car and change into when you finish your walk.