Rhetoric gives our words the power to inspire. But it's not just for politicians: it's all around us, whether you're buttering up a key client or persuading your children to eat their greens. You have been using rhetoric yourself, all your life. After all, you know what a rhetorical question is, don't you?

In this updated edition of his classic guide, Sam Leith traces the art of argument from ancient Greece down to its many modern mutations. He introduces verbal villains from Hitler to Donald Trump - and the three musketeers: ethos, pathos and logos. He explains how rhetoric works in speeches from Cicero to Richard Nixon, and pays tribute to the rhetorical brilliance of AC/DC's "Back In Black". Before you know it, you'll be confident in chiasmus and proud of your panegyrics - because rhetoric is useful, relevant and absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

John Rowland, a disgraced former Royal Navy lieutenant, has taken a job as a lowly deck hand aboard the largest ship ever to have sailed, the Titan. One night in deep fog, the Titan strikes a gigantic iceberg and sinks almost immediately. Written in 1898, fourteen years before the Titanic's sinking, this novel has been hailed in equal measures as a prophetic work and the result of pure coincidence. Certainly the similarities are striking: two unsinkable ships steam ahead in treacherous conditions, carrying privileged passengers, with an insufficient number of lifeboats. Sam Leith's foreword grapples with the nature of chance, and the surprises it can produce.

Here lies Lord Berners/One of life's learners, Thanks be to the Lord/He was never bored. So reads the epitaph on the gravestone of Lord Berners. In its witty way, it hints at his range of accomplishment. He was a composer (admired by Stravinsky), writer, painter, aesthete and eccentric, indeed in Mark Amory's words 'The Last Eccentric', famously dyeing the pigeons at his house, Faringdon, in vibrant colours, and, for a time, having a giraffe as a pet and tea companion. His literary and artistic milieu was glittering: Stravinsky, Picasso, Salvador Dali, Siegfried Sassoon, John Betjeman, the Sitwells, Harold Nicolson, Frederick Ashton and Gertrude Stein - they all belonged to it. In fiction, he was famously portrayed as Lord Merlin in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love. 'As social history and a chronicle of a mad-cap English eccentric this long awaited, much needed and beautifully written book is, to use a simple cliche, indispensable.' Alexander Waugh, Literary Review 'In Amory, this engaging character has found the ideal biographer. Getting the exact measure of its subject throughout, written in a dry, wittily ironic prose ... the biography offers of sheer bliss.' Gilbert Adair, Sunday Times

Writing tends to make people anxious, and with good reason. The first sentence of a job application letter can consign it to the bin. A speech intended to rouse can put a room to sleep. A mistimed tweet can cost you your job. And a letter to a beloved may aim to convey feelings of tenderness but end up making the recipient laugh rather than melt.

In this complete guide to persuasive writing, Sam Leith shows how to express yourself fully across any medium, and how to maximise your chances of getting your way in every situation. From work reports to Valentine cards, and from emails of condolence to tweets of complaint, Leith lays bare the secrets to successful communication, eloquence and off- and online etiquette. How do you write a job application, a thank-you card, or an email to your bank manager, to your children's headteacher, to your clients or your boss? How do you prepare a speech to win the argument, get the vote of confidence, or embarrass the bridegroom? Getting these things right - or wrong - can be life-changing.

Succinct treatments of the most general principles of style and composition, as well as examinations of specific modes of address (What is a subtweet? How do I write a moving elegy?) are accompanied by concrete and well-illustrated dos and don'ts and examples of wins and fails. Astute, sprightly and illuminating, Write to the Point will give you the skills and confidence you need to get your message across on every occasion.

Shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 'A tremendous novel - droll, savvy, original. An invigorating blast of fiction' William Boyd 'A superbly entertaining brain-twister' The Times A hurricane sweeps off the Gulf of Mexico and in the back-country of Alabama, assembles a passenger jet out of old bean-cans and junkyard waste. An eccentric mathematician - last heard of investigating the physics of free will and ranting about the devil - vanishes in the French Pyrenees. And the thuggish operatives of a multinational arms conglomerate are closing in on Alex Smart - a harmless Cambridge postgraduate who has set off with hope in his heart and a ring in his pocket to ask his American girlfriend to marry him. At the Directorate of the Extremely Improbable - an organisation so secret that many of its operatives aren't 100 per cent sure it exists -- Red Queen takes an interest. What ensues is a chaotic chase across an imaginary America, haunted by madness, murder, mistaken identity, and a very large number of unhealthy but delicious snacks. The Coincidence Engine exists. And it has started to work. The Coincidence Engine is consistently engaging - one of the most enjoyable, entertaining debut novels you'll come across for ages.

A parliament of fools, or a confederacy of dunces? Blethering celebrities and blundering politicians, royal babies and right royal cock-ups, milkshake madness and vegan sausage rolls - and, of course, the long and winding road to Brexit. If ever the times were ripe for a return to the high days of Augustan satire, it's now - and the Spectator's literary editor Sam Leith provides it. Our Times in Rhymes is a waspish, affectionate and very funny look at the state of our nation as it - let's be even-handed - teeters on the cliff-edge of a marvellous opportunity. Here is all the insanity and inanity of 2019, month by cherishable month, rendered in galloping comic verse and paired with satirical drawings by the brilliant cartoonist Edith Pritchett. It makes the perfect Christmas stocking filler for anyone who needs a good laugh at the damnable times we live in.