This is how the Cape Argus www.CapeArgus.co.za  (August 26, 2004) quoted from Simon Mann's note as smuggled out of jail in Harare. Aside from the cloak-and-dagger intrigue that surrounds this story, what struck me especially was the language used in Mann's note. Not, you may imagine written on a leather-covered writing desk, but from prison on two plain sheets of paper and a scrap of a magazine page. It got me wondering how I associate an elegant use of English with good manners and, generally, someone being worthwhile. Even without reading that Mann went to Eton I could tell, from his writing style, that he was a gent. The fact that he seems to be implicated in a murder-for-money coup plot comes as a total surprise to me. After all, anyone who writes so well - from prison no less - can't be all bad?

I think it was the colon that impressed me; also the light touch in using 'heavy" at the start of the sentence and, for greater impact, 'heavily" at the end.

For someone such as I, who performed hopelessly badly at school and who's formal education is lacking, spends an age attempting to use English correctly. That Mann can do so, effortlessy it seems, annoys me immensely.