By ROBERT GIBSON

Last updated at 21:30, Friday, 05 March 2010

WORDS of wisdom from Riding Mill speed reading champion Anne Jones have been included in the latest edition of the classic text on the subject, The Speed Reading Book.

Anne Jones

Tony Buzan’s inspirational guide was first published in 1971, and since then has carried a forward from the late linguist Heinz Norden.

Looking to update things, the BBC, who publish the book, contacted Anne, who was thrilled to find herself credited on the title page as a “special consultant”.

In her new foreword, she says: “I read The Speed Reading Book for the first time in 1996.

“If anyone had told me then that, years later, I would be writing the foreword for a new edition of it, I would not have believed it.

“Reading the first page for the first time, I knew very little about speed reading and I was doubtful about whether I could do it.

“I need not have worried! Just over a year later, I had won my first world championship and I was speed reading books with ease, at over 1000 words per minute.”

Anne, a former teacher, has won the world speed reading championship six times, gained seven gold medals at the Mind Sports Olympiad, and achieved a record speed of 4,251 words per minute over the course of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

First published at 09:44, Friday, 05 March 2010
Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk