In his autobiography The Breaks Are Off, for example, published two years ago at the start of an England one-day international tour of India, he caused a stir with his appraisal of Kevin Pietersen's lack of aptitude for captaincy.
But beauty lies in the eye of the beholder, and my appraisal of the Longlands Lane turbine on a warm spring evening is not likely to echo that of locals who once knew and loved the empty sky it now fills.
Hattersley's appraisal of the Prime Minister's politics echoes comments by union leaders and many backbench Labour MPs, who say Blair is leading the party in the wrong direction.
Hope of ascent up the parliamentary pecking order – or fear of a punitive pecking by a rival faction – often comes before appraisal of the arguments.
A Cairo appeals judge has issued a damning appraisal of last year's trial of three al-Jazeera English journalists, a month after he quashed their convictions and sent their case to a retrial that will begin on Thursday.
Rangers' title celebrations will be tempered by the latest stark appraisal of the off-field situation at Ibrox by Walter Smith.
Following the Duma allegations of "annexation" of East Germany by West Germany, Gorbachev protested, warning that "our appraisal of the past should not be based on today's views".
Reading James Joyce's The Dead at this time of year gives it the feel of an inverted Christmas Carol: an awkward, unassuming man undergoes a handful of small slights, all of which lead him to a moment of profound and painful self-appraisal.
He led the initiative with a personal effort to teach physicians about the critical appraisal of medical evidence, a job that was soon taken up by his many supporters in articles and books that have become standard texts around the world.
NHS England is trying to promote the "learning as we go" approach by pushing the vanguards to publish and analyse outcomes data while the programme is running rather than waiting for some long-winded appraisal with limited value at the end.
His arrival has prompted a lengthy appraisal of the challenge facing Katches, and the "plainly wounded" Oregonian's likely fate, by newspaper analyst Ken Doctor for the Nieman Journalism Lab.
