Simon Winchester Raconteur Extroadinaire

Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand. Bangkok. November 12, 2012. I had thought that there weren't any raconteurs left in the world. After all, the media doesn't condone anything of more than a very few minutes in length, nor any presentation that is not in the form of a quick sound bite, which must contain no more than one "talking point," if that much. The extended tale told with self-deprecating humor, the aimlessness of a good story, an anecdote told with skill and wit, are all from a bygone era. Then comes along best-selling British author, Simon Winchester, who regaled the rapt audience at the FCCT with more than an hour of stories of his life, principally on this occasion, his war reporting from the Falklands Islands, which resulted in his being jailed as a spy in Argentina for three months. It was the best talk I can remember attending at the FCCT and the audience was spellbound. Winchester talked without notes and there was no power point presentation (an uncommon occurrence at the FCCT) to distract and annoy. Just good stories centering on Winchester's conviction that most important events in his life were the result of luck and happenstance (not true at all because Winchester saw and created opportunities for himself that would have bypassed most others in similar circumstances.) It is easy to see why Winchester's books are instant best-sellers, and without touting any of his books, I can say that I was not the only one in the audience determined to go out and buy some of them, in my case, "The Professor and the Madman," which is the story of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, which, incidentally, sold 2.5 million copies and is still going strong after seven years.