One wouldn’t want to overstate one’s enthusiasm, would one?

I'm leafing through the British and European speechwriting-shepherd Brian Jenner's jaunty new book, Trade Secrets: Jokes, stories and quotations for desperate speechwriters in 2014.

This one, from Robert Hardman's newish book, Our Queen, got me: "The Queen's speechwriter was drafting a speech about a visit to Birmingham and the first line read, 'I am very glad to be back in Birmingham.' The Queen read the sentence, picked up a pen and crossed out the 'very.'"

Quite. —DM