From birds, to love letters, imagined apologies, mind-numbing management-speak, Oscar Wilde, Anzac Day, strange people and racehorses, in this collection of his writing Don Watson brings his distinctive voice and way of seeing to a host of deserving subjects.

Historian, essayist, speechwriter, humourist, anti-cant crusader; Don Watson has a gift for luring us to the nub of a matter, or at least to a new view of it, there to grin or grind our teeth at the spectacle.

Over the years Don Watson has written on politics and politicians in Australia and the USA, sport, nature, history, culture, crimes against speech, and military commemorations. Sometimes he writes in celebration of a moment or a creature of beauty; at other times, because something or someone gets on his goat or up it, as young folk say these days.

At the heart of all of his work is the belief that, more than just about anything else more even than free markets or lifestyle choices in a civilized society words matter.