Public life is loud, reactive and full of people mistaking noise for importance. But there is a difference between speaking when something must be said and simply filling the silence.

What do you listen to while you work? I struggle to multitask – typical male, I guess – so the music I have on in the background can’t draw my attention away too much as I edit the pieces we’re going to publish on P&I each day.

As I write this, I’m listening to New Grass by Talk Talk. It’s a song I love. It feels to me like being barefoot on dew-damp grass as the sun rises on a warm day. Like much of Talk Talk’s later work, it’s a piece that’s made especially lovely by its use of space, restraint and refusal to fill every gap.

Talk Talk’s enigmatic and very much not-your-typical-pop-star frontman Mark Hollis – who died in 2019 – loved this idea of using sound sparingly and deliberately, and coupling it with silence. He once told a music magazine: “I like silence. I get on great with silence…if you’re going to break into it, just try and have a reason for doing it.”

There are plenty of people in public life who would benefit from considering that idea.

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