05 October 2017
Top Facts
Their use and the Zulu principle.
By Chin Chin
Well, strike me purple. There I was with a really top fact, convinced that I was the only one who knew it, when the first person I tried it out on came up with the answer in seconds.
It all comes of reading French history. That is not real history, of course, not history as read by the academics, but rather that marvellous book A Holiday History of France by Ronald Hamilton which was published in 1985. And a very good book it is too, with three or four pages for each King, Emperor or President since the accession of Hugh Capet in the tenth century, together with short summaries of advances in architecture and art. Even I can concentrate for four pages at a time, so a rough understanding of the chronology can be obtained by a quick dip into the book every night before going to sleep. It isn’t just the chronology either. There are top facts a’plenty and the one I was hoping to use on my friends was that Richard the Lionheart and Philip Augustus of France, who went as comrades in arms to lead the Third Crusade, actually shared a bed while on campaign.
Needless to say such camaraderie, and as far as I can make out it was only camaraderie, ended in enmity with Philip trying to prolong Richard’s captivity in Austria whilst his brother John was undermining him. Still, the fact itself is remarkable and dropped into conversation the right way could give an appearance of learning. How to introduce it? That was the question. In these cases it is no good beginning with the words “bet you don’t know that”. That makes it look as though you yourself have only just come across the point. Ideally, of course, someone else raises the topic and you can drop your fact in as part of a reply. That, however, requires engineering worthy of Brunel so I decided to take the intermediate route of putting it as a question – rather as if I was composing a quiz.
“I wanted to try an interesting question on you,” I hazarded, with the air of one who had pondered and then solved the conundrum himself without looking up the answer. “When was the last time that the monarchs of England and France shared a bed?” I stood waiting. Would my companion come up with a Royal marriage or one of those periods, say just after the crowning of Henry VI, when you could just about argue that the Plantagenet for the time being was the de facto King of France?
“That must be Richard and Philip” he replied, as if everybody knew. Net result: he was not in the slightest impressed with my knowledge whereas I was knocked sideways by his. There is such a thing as being just too erudite!
“Oh well,” I said to myself, “it is just an isolated fact, and in the scheme of things isolated facts are not all that important.” That may have been consoling but it was also wrong. Isolated facts can be very important indeed.
Jim Slater, joint founder of the investment house Slater Walker which collapsed in the 1970s, wrote about a system of investment which he christened “the Zulu principle”. His idea was that you become specialist in a very narrow area where there was little general interest so that you could be the most knowledgeable person in the marketplace and make profits accordingly. He chose the name because his wife was reading a book about Zulus at the time and it seemed to him that one could become a leading expert on that topic fairly easily.
Whatever the merits of this as an investment strategy, it certainly has lessons for those who wish to pose as knowledgeable. Take your topic – the history of France being a possible example. Learn 10 top facts and drop them into conversation when the opportunity arises so that they end up broadly distributed like currants in a spotted Dick. No one will realise that those are the only interesting facts you know. Rather they will imagine that your mind is like an iceberg with the bits you can see a small reflection of the weight and depth below the surface. Before long you will hear yourself referred to as an expert and, if you keep it up long enough, honorary degrees at one or two of the new universities will probably follow.
To really exploit the approach, however, you have to go a little further. Find groups of facts in, say, three different areas and use them liberally. No one ever says that “Mr X is expert in the history of France, mathematical theory and French philosophers”. They will assume that if you know something on each of these diverse topics you must be incredibly learned generally. If you pull this off successfully the honorary degrees may turn into a chair.
Still, it isn’t all show. To a point these little islands of knowledge do give you access to wider learning. They may suggest to you the reading of books which you would not otherwise touch or the answering of questions which you would not otherwise ask. Just what did Richard and Philip talk about in that bed which led them to spend the rest of their lives at war with each other? Perhaps it was the true ownership of Poitou – or perhaps it was just that one of them snored.
