How to master the ancient art of winning people over

"I'd like to persuade you to come to see me at the Edinburgh Book Festival this weekend. However, to do that I'm going to have to tell you about why I'm not sure persuasion is a good thing. And just to make the knots I'm tying myself into even more tangled, that means I'm going to try to persuade you to resist persuasion, and hope in this instance that you don't."

This week's Herald column.