Len Deighton was born in 1929 in London. He did his national service in the RAF, went to the Royal College of Art and designed many book jackets, including the original UK edition of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. The enormous success of his first spy novel, The IPCRESS File (1962), was repeated in a remarkable sequence of books over the following decades. These varied from historical fiction (Bomber, perhaps his greatest novel) to dystopian alternative fiction (SS-GB) and a number of brilliant non-fiction books on the Second World War (Fighter, Blitzkrieg and Blood, Tears and Folly). 
 
His spy novels chart the twists and turns of Britain and the Cold War in ways which now give them a unique flavour. They preserve a world in which Europe contains many dictatorships, in which the personal can be ruined by the ideological and where the horrors of the Second World War are buried under only a very thin layer of soil. Deighton's fascination with technology, his sense of humour and his brilliant evocation of time and place make him one of the key British espionage writers, alongside John Buchan, Eric Ambler, Ian Fleming and John Le Carré.

Len Deighton

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Michael Quinion

Long-time word-detective and bestselling author of Port Out, Starboard Home, Michael Quinion brings us the answers to nearly two hundred of the most intriguing questions he's been asked about language over the years. Sent to him by enquiring readers from all around the globe, Michael's answers about the meanings and histories behind the quirky phrases, slang and language that we all use are set to delight, amuse and enlighten even the most hardened word-obsessive. 
 
Did you know that 'Blighty' comes from an ancient Arabic word? Or that Liberace cried his way to the bank so many times people think he came up with the phrase? That 'cloud nine' started out as 'cloud seven' in the speakeasies of '30s America? And that the first person to have their thunder stolen was a dismal playwright from Drury Lane? 
 
Michael Quinion's Why is Q Always Followed By U? is full of surprising discoveries, entertaining quotations and memorable information. There are plenty of colourful stories out there, but Michael Quinion will help you discover the truth that lies behind the cock-and-bull stories and make sure you're always linguistically on the ball.

Why is Q Always Followed by U?

Word-Perfect Answers to the Most-Asked Questions About Language

David Corbett

Former private investigator and New York Times notable author David Corbett offers a unique and indispensable toolkit for creating characters that come vividly to life on the page and linger in memory. Corbett provides an inventive, inspiring, and vastly entertaining blueprint to all the elements of characterization-from initial inspiration to realization-with special insights into the power of secrets and contradictions, the embodiment of roles, managing the "tyranny of motive," and mastering crucial techniques required for memorable dialogue and unforgettable scenes. This is a how-to guide for both aspiring and accomplished writers that renders all other books of its kind obsolete.

The Art of Character

Creating Memorable Characters for Fiction, Film, and TV

Steven Pinker

Bad writing can't be blamed on the Internet, or on 'the kids today'. Good writing has always been hard: a performance requiring pretense, empathy, and a drive for coherence. In The Sense of Style, cognitive scientist and linguist Steven Pinker uses the latest scientific insights to bring us a style and usage guide for the 21st century. Can we distinguish the myths about language from rules that enhance clarity and grace? As Pinker shows, everyone can improve their mastery of writing and their appreciation of the art (yes, 'their').

The Sense of Style

The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century

Yomi Sode

In poems exploring family, survival, generational trauma and the complexities of belonging, Manorism is an examination of the lives of Black British men and boys. At the heart of the book is the ongoing pressure of code-switching - changing one's behaviour and language to suit radically different cultural contexts and environments. The violence of artists such as Caravaggio in seventeenth-century Rome and modern-day commentary by the likes of David Starkey and Piers Morgan provide a lens for considering differences of impunity afforded to white and Black people. Snippets of Yoruba interweave with English, and a moving final sequence - adapted for the Almeida stage in June 2021 to glowing reviews from the Guardian, Time Out and others - charts the dramatic reconciliations surrounding a death in the family. The result is a thrillingly original book that charts the vulnerabilities and rich nuances of Black masculinity in Britain.

Manorism

Keith Houston

Where does the ampersand get its name from? What does the hashtag have to do with commerce in ancient Rome? Keith Houston gives the answers in this delightfully entertaining book. 
 
From the pilcrow ¶ to the ampersand, the entire cast of Shady Characters reflects the changes in written communication through the ages, charting how punctuation has adapted to each new technological innovation. Together, these shady characters form a rich, entertaining and surprising history of the written word and our ongoing attempts to shape it. 
 
'Engaging typographical journeys . . . Houston brings to life a history of ingenuity and imagination' The Times 
 
'Entertaining, informative, a must-read. If ever a book deserved its hardbacked, reverse-embossed, lavishly illustrated, thick white heavy paper incarnation, and a place on an actual bookshelf, it is Shady Characters' Guardian 
 
'Houston brings considerable wit to the 5,000-year-old enigma of how we attempt to communicate our thoughts through visible signs . . . Shady Characters might make you look at books - in print or online - in an entirely new way' Nature 
 
'Refreshing . . . the stories he uncovers along the way are fascinating' Telegraph 
 
'Ventures into the previously untrodden history of punctuation marks . . . scholarly, highly readable' Spectator 
 
Keith Houston is the founder of ShadyCharacters.co.uk, where he writes about the unusual stories behind some well-known - and some rather more outlandish - marks of punctuation.

Shady Characters

Ampersands, Interrobangs and other Typographical Curiosities

Jing Tsu

What does it take to reinvent the world's oldest living language? 
 
China today is one of the world's most powerful nations, yet just a century ago it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite few, left behind in the wake of Western technology. In Kingdom of Characters, Jing Tsu shows that China's most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: to make the formidable Chinese language - a 2,200-year-old writing system that was daunting to natives and foreigners alike - accessible to a globalized, digital world. 
 
Kingdom of Characters follows the bold innovators who adapted the Chinese script - and the value-system it represents - to the technological advances that would shape the twentieth century and beyond, from the telegram to the typewriter to the smartphone. From the exiled reformer who risked death to advocate for Mandarin as a national language to the imprisoned computer engineer who devised input codes for Chinese characters on the lid of a teacup, generations of scholars, missionaries, librarians, politicians, inventors, nationalists and revolutionaries alike understood the urgency of their task and its world-shaping consequences. 
 
With larger-than-life characters and a thrilling narrative, Kingdom of Characters offers an astonishingly original perspective on one of the twentieth century's most dramatic transformations.

Kingdom of Characters

A Tale of Language, Obsession, and Genius in Modern China

Simon Winchester

The making of the Oxford English Dictionary was a monumental 50 year task requiring thousands of volunteers. One of the keenest volunteers was a W C Minor who astonished everyone by refusing to come to Oxford to receive his congratulations. In the end, James Murray, the OED's editor, went to Crowthorne in Berkshire to meet him. What he found was incredible - Minor was a millionaire American civil war surgeon turned lunatic, imprisoned in Broadmoor Asylum for murder and yet who dedicated his entire cell-bound life to work on the English language.

The Surgeon of Crowthorne

A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Oxford English Dictionary

Dennis Duncan

Most of us give little thought to the back of the book - it's just where you go to look things up. But here, hiding in plain sight, is an unlikely realm of ambition and obsession, sparring and politicking, pleasure and play. Here we might find Butchers, to be avoided, or Cows that sh-te Fire, or even catch Calvin in his chamber with a Nonne. This is the secret world of the index: an unsung but extraordinary everyday tool, with an illustrious but little-known past. Here, for the first time, its story is told. 
 
Charting its curious path from the monasteries and universities of thirteenth-century Europe to Silicon Valley in the twenty-first, Dennis Duncan reveals how the index has saved heretics from the stake, kept politicians from high office and made us all into the readers we are today. We follow it through German print shops and Enlightenment coffee houses, novelists' living rooms and university laboratories, encountering emperors and popes, philosophers and prime ministers, poets, librarians and - of course - indexers along the way. Revealing its vast role in our evolving literary and intellectual culture, Duncan shows that, for all our anxieties about the Age of Search, we are all index-rakers at heart, and we have been for eight hundred years.

Index, A History of the

David Crystal

In this fascinating survey of everything from how sounds become speech to how names work, David Crystal answers every question you might ever have had about the nuts and bolts of language in his usual highly illuminating way. Along the way we find out about eyebrow flashes, whistling languages, how parents teach their children to speak, how politeness travels across languages and how the way we talk show not just how old we are but where we&rsquo;re from and even who we want to be.

How Language Works

Michael Emmerich

Here is the perfect introduction to contemporary Japanese fiction. Featuring many stories appearing in English for the first time, this collection, with parallel translations, offers students at all levels the opportunity to enjoy a wide range of contemporary literature without having to constantly consult a dictionary. Richly diverse in themes and styles, the stories are by well-known writers-like Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto-as well as by emerging voices. Complete with notes, these selections make excellent reading in either language.

Short Stories in Japanese

New Penguin Parallel Text

James Patterson

To be a bookseller or librarian . . . 
 
You have to play detective. 
 
Be a treasure hunter. A matchmaker. A brilliant listener. 
 
A person who creates a kind of magic by pulling a book from a shelf, handing it to someone and saying, 'You've got to read this. You're going to love it'. 
 
In this love letter to the heroes of literacy, James Patterson uncovers true stories from booksellers and librarians. Prepare to enter a world where you can feed your curiosities, discover new voices, and find whatever you need. 
 
Meet the smart and talented people who live between the shelves - and who can't wait to help you find your next great read. 
 
_________________________________ 
 
PRAISE FOR JAMES PATTERSON 
 
'No one gets this big without amazing natural storytelling talent - which is what Jim has, in spades.' LEE CHILD 
 
'James Patterson is The Boss. End of.' IAN RANKIN 
 
'The master storyteller of our times' HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON 
 
'One of the greatest storytellers of all time' PATRICIA CORNWELL 
 
'Patterson is in a class by himself' GUARDIAN

The Secret Lives of Booksellers & Librarians

True stories of the magic of reading

Howard Mittelmark

Sandra Newman

There are many ways prospective authors routinely sabotage their own work. But why leave it to guesswork? Misstep by misstep, How Not to Write a Novel shows how you can ensure that your manuscript never rises above the level of unpublishable drivel; that your characters are unpleasant, dimensionless versions of yourself; that your plot is digressive, tedious and unconvincing; and that your style is reliant on mangled clichés and sesquipedalian malapropisms. Alternatively, you can use it to identify the most common mistakes, avoid them and actually write a book that works. 
 
Guardian Award shortlisted novelist Sandra Newman and veteran editor Howard Mittelmark have distilled 30 years of teaching, editing, writing and reviewing fiction into a hilarious and liberating guide that is the perfect read for anyone who's ever laughed at a badly written piece of prose and for anyone who's ever penned one - and doesn't want to do it again.

How NOT to Write a Novel

200 Mistakes to avoid at All Costs if You Ever Want to Get Published

Julia Cresswell

A fascinating, thematic exploration of clich&eacute;s from as the actress said to the bishop to zero hour, explaining what they are and where they&rsquo;ve come from. Julia Cresswell has taken her best-selling dictionary of clich&eacute;s (&lsquo;Sumptuous&hellip; A mine of information.&rsquo; Guardian) back to the drawing board and has created a book, packed with famous (and infamous) quotations and memorable information, that will change the way you see English.

The Cat's Pyjamas

The Penguin Book of Clichés

'Dazzling... Pinker's big idea is that language is an instinct...as innate to us as flying is to geese... Words can hardly do justice to the superlative range and liveliness of Pinker's investigations' 
- Independent 
 
'A marvellously readable book... illuminates every facet of human language: its biological origin, its uniqueness to humanity, it acquisition by children, its grammatical structure, the production and perception of speech, the pathology of language disorders and the unstoppable evolution of languages and dialects' - Nature

The Language Instinct

How the Mind Creates Language

This is an all new version of the popular PARALLEL TEXT series, containing eight pieces of contemporary fiction in the original Italian and in English translation. Including stories by Calvino, Benni, Sciascia and Levi, this volume gives a fascinating insight into Italian culture and literature as well as providing an invaluable educational tool.

Short Stories in Italian

New Penguin Parallel Texts

Ronald Carter

John McRae

This second edition of The Penguin Guide to Literature in English: Britain and Ireland provides an illustrated introduction to the work of the most important writers and their historical background from the year 600 to the end of the twentieth century. It covers the works of novelists, dramatists and poets from Chaucer to Shakespeare, Austen to Dickens, James Joyce to Seamus Heaney, right through to modern-day authors such as Jeanette Winterson, Roddy Doyle and Irvine Welsh.

The Penguin Guide to Literature in English

Britain And Ireland

Laurie Bauer

A unique collection of original essays by 21 of the world's leading linguists. The topics discussed focus on some of the most popular myths about language: The Media Are Ruining English; Children Can't Speak or Write Properly Anymore; America is Ruining the English Language. The tone is lively and entertaining throughout and there are cartoons from Doonesbury andThe Wizard of Id to illustrate some of the points. The book should have a wide readership not only amongst students who want to read leading linguists writing about popular misconceptions but also amongst the large number of people who enjoy reading about language in general.

Language Myths

Richard Coward

This is an all new version of the popular PARALLEL TEXT series, containing eight pieces of contemporary fiction in the original French and in English translation. Including stories by Bolanger, Cotnoir, Le Clezio and Germain, this volume gives afascinating insight into French culture and literature as well as providing an invaluable educational tool.

Short Stories in French

Christopher Fowler

'A delight . . . a glorious, witty and life-affirming ragbag of autobiography, cultural commentary and hard-won wisdom.' ANDREW TAYLOR, author of The Shadows of London 
 
'Perceptive, wise and illuminating . . . an unmissable farewell.' Barry Forshaw, FINANCIAL TIMES 
 
'The most hilarious, life-affirming book you&rsquo;ll read this year.' SAGA magazine 
 
'Wit and wisdom that make every page turn . . . what a fine talent the world has lost.' STARBURST 
 
This is the memoir Christopher Fowler always wanted to write about 'writing'. 
 
It's the story of how a young bookworm growing up in a house where there was nothing to read but knitting pamphlets and motorcycle manuals became a writer - a 'word monkey' - and pursued a sort of career in popular fiction. And it's a book full of brilliant insights into the pleasures and pitfalls of his profession, dos and don'ts for would-be writers, and astute observations on favourite (and not-so-favourite) novelists. 
 
But woven into this hugely entertaining and inspiring reflection on a literary life is an altogether darker thread. In Spring 2020, just as the world went into lockdown, Chris was diagnosed with terminal cancer. And yet there is nothing of the misery memoir about Word Monkey. Past and present intermingle as, in prose as light as air, he relates with wry humour and remarkable honesty what he knows will be the final chapter in his story. 
 
Deeply moving, insightful and surprisingly funny, this is Christopher Fowler's life-affirming account of coming to terms with his own mortality. 
 
'A remarkable book by a remarkable writer: amazingly entertaining and informative and also, for obvious reasons, one of the most moving.' SIMON MASON, author of the DI Wilkins Mysteries 
 
'Wonderful . . . there is no bitterness here, but a hearty celebration of how art defines a life, with dark humour on the right occasions and the deliberate aim to leave a positive message . . . his enthusiasm is infectious and sobering when you are aware that he was dying as he wrote these pages.' Maxim Jacubowski, CRIME TIME

Word Monkey

Joe Moran

The sentence is the common ground where every writer walks. A poet writes in sentences, but so does the unsung author who came up with Items trapped in doors cause delays. A good sentence can be written (and read) by anyone if we simply give it the gift of our time. 
 
 Enter widely-acclaimed author Professor Joe Moran. First You Write a Sentence is his unpedantic and authoritative explanation of how the most ordinary words can be turned into verbal constellations of extraordinary grace. Using examples ranging from the Bible and Shakespeare to George Orwell and Maggie Nelson, and studies of what can best fire the reader's mind, he shows how we can all write in a way that is clear, compelling and alive. Good writing can even make ourselves known to others and live more meaningful lives. It's an elegant gem in praise of the English sentence.

First You Write a Sentence.

The Elements of Reading, Writing … and Life.

This is an all new version of the popular PARALLEL TEXT series, containing eight pieces of contemporary fiction in the original Spanish and in English translation. Including stories by Fuentes, Molinas, Marquez and Cortazar, this volume gives a fascinating insight into Spanish and Latin American culture and literature as well as providing an invaluable educational tool.

Short Stories in Spanish

Carol Atherton

How can a Victorian poem help teenagers understand YouTube misogyny? Can Jane Eyre encourage us to speak out? What can Lady Macbeth teach us about empathy? Should our expectations for our future be any greater than Pip’s? And why is it so important to make space for these conversations in the first place? 
 
In a career spanning almost three decades, English teacher Carol Atherton has taught generations of students texts that will be familiar to many of us from our own schooldays. But while the staples of exam syllabuses and reading lists remain largely unchanged, their significance – and their relevance – evolves with each class, as it encounters them for the first time. 
 
Each chapter of Reading Lessons invites us to take a fresh look at these novels, plays and poems, revealing how they have shaped our beliefs, our values, and how we interact as a society. As she recalls her own development as a teacher, Atherton emphasizes the vital, undervalued role a teacher plays, illustrates how essential reading is for developing our empathy and makes a passionate case for the enduring power of literature.

Reading Lessons

An English Teacher’s Love Letter to the Books that Shape Us

The books we read at school, the conversations they spark and why they matter

Albert Jack

The English language is crammed with colourful phrases and sayings that we use without thinking every day. It's only when we're asked who smart Alec or Holy Moly were, where feeling in the pink or once in a blue moon come from, or even what letting the cat out of the bag really means that we realize that there's far more to English than we might have thought. 
 
Luckily enough, we now have Albert Jack. And rather than resting on his laurels after the enormous success of Red Herrings and White Elephants, he has continued his search around the world, exploring the origins of hundreds more phrases. The fascinating stories he has uncovered come from the rich traditions of the navy, army and law to confidence tricksters and highwaymen, from the practices of ancient civilizations to Music Hall and pubs. Determined to chase each shaggy dog story to the bitter end, his discoveries are even stranger and more memorable this time round. 
 
Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep is a compulsively readable, highly enlightening look at the phrases we use all the time but rarely consider. From the skin of your teeth to the graveyard shift - you'll never speak (or even think) English in the same way again.

Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep

The Origins of Even More Phrases We Use Every Day

Cory Arcangel

What does it feel like to try and create something new? How is it possible to find a space for the demands of writing a novel in a world of instant communication? 
 
Working on My Novel is about the act of creation and the gap between the different ways we express ourselves today. Exploring the extremes of making art, from satisfaction and even euphoria to those days or nights when nothing will come, it's the story of what it means to be a creative person, and why we keep on trying.

Working On My Novel

Nicholas Ostler

In this provocative and persuasive new book, Nicholas Ostler challenges our assumption that English will continue to dominate as the global lingua franca. Drawing on his encyclopaedic knowledge of world languages and their history, Ostler reveals that just as past great languages like Latin and Sanskrit have died out, so English will follow. 
 
The influence of English now is hard to exaggerate - it is the world's preferred medium for business, science and entertainment, and is claimed to be a basic educational tool like mathematics or computing. So is it here to stay? For the last four centuries, the dominant world power has been English-speaking, but the global balance of power is shifting. And in countries like Brazil, Russia and China, English plays no part in the national tradition. 
 
Although globalization has helped the rise of English, trade, migration, economic development and technological innovation are now changing the way we access and use language. Ostler shows how we are headed towards a much more multilingual and diverse future. And as English retreats, no single language will take its place. 
 
We can embrace this future but first we need to accept it: the last competitive advantage of native English-speakers will soon be consigned to history.

The Last Lingua Franca

English Until the Return of Babel

This second volume of short stories contains more diverse and lively writing from the Spanish-speaking world. Again much of it is from Latin America, Carlos Fuentes being Mexican, Norberto Fuentes Cuban, and the other writers having their roots in Uruguay, Chile, Peru, Colombia and the Argentine. Only Ana Maria Matute is a native of Spain. 
 
This highly entertaining selection of stories, together with a chapter from Mario Vargas Llosa&rsquo;s novel &lsquo;Conversation in the Cathedral&rsquo;, explores stylistic contrasts and gives an insight into the cultural and social milieu of the Spanish-speaking world. With notes on unusual Spanish words and phrases, it will be of great value to English students of the language as well as a helpful companion to Spanish-speaking students of English.

Spanish Short Stories

David Bellos

'Please read David Bellos's brilliant book', Michael Hofmann, Guardian 
 
'In his marvellous study of the nature of translation...[David Bellos] has set out to make it fun...Essential reading for anyone with even a vague interest in language and translation - in short, it is a triumph', Shaun Whiteside, Independent 
 
'A dazzyingly inventive book', Adam Thirlwell, New York Times 
 
'Is That A Fish In Your Ear? is spiced with good and provocative things. At once erudite and unpretentious...[it is a] scintillating bouillabaisse', Frederic Raphael, Literary Review

Is That a Fish in Your Ear?

Translation and the Meaning of Everything

J. P. Davidson

'The way you speak is who you are and the tones of your voice and the tricks of your emailing and tweeting and letter-writing, can be recognised unmistakably in the minds of those who know and love you.' Stephen Fry 
 
 From feral children to fairy-tale princesses, secrets codes, invented languages - even a language that was eaten! - Planet Word uncovers everything you didn't know you needed to know about how language evolves. Learn the tricks to political propaganda, why we can talk but animals can't, discover 3,000-year-old clay tablets that discussed beer and impotence and test yourself at textese - do you know your RMEs from your LOLs? Meet the 105-year-old man who invented modern-day Chinese and all but eradicated illiteracy, and find out why language caused the go-light in Japan to be blue. From the dusty scrolls of the past to the unknown digital future, and with (heart) the first graphic to enter the OED, are we already well on our way to a language without words? 
 
 In a round-the-world trip of a lifetime, discover all this and more as J. P. Davidson travels across our gloriously, endlessly intriguing multilingual Planet Word.

Planet Word

John Yorke

We all love stories. But why do we tell them? And why do all stories function in an eerily similar way? John Yorke, creator of the BBC Writers' Academy, has brought a vast array of drama to British screens. Here he takes us on a journey to the heart of storytelling, revealing that there truly is a unifying shape to narrative forms - one that echoes the fairytale journey into the woods and, like any great art, comes from deep within. From ancient myths to big-budget blockbusters, he gets to the root of the stories that are all around us, every day.

Into The Woods

How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them

Jay Heinrichs

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
Your ultimate guide to the art of winning arguments 
 
Everyone is always trying to persuade us of something: politicians, advertising, the media, and most definitely our families. Thank You for Arguing is your master class in the art of persuasion, taught by professors ranging from Bart Simpson to Winston Churchill. With all the wisdom of the ages, from classical oratory to contemporary politics and pop-culture, Thank You For Arguing shows you how to win more than your fair share of arguments, as well as: 
 
>How to shine at work, avoid speeding tickets, and outwit argumentative partners 
>Cicero's secrets to moving an audience, Donald Trump's savvy speechmaking, the art of giving a TED talk 
>Tactics like Setting Your Goals, Making Them Like You, Gaining the High Ground 
>Defuse an angry accuser and benefit from your own mistakes 
>The art of rhetoric, from eloquence and friendship to wit and irrefutable logic 
 
Written by one of today's most popular online language experts, Thank You For Arguing is brimming with time-tested rhetorical tips and persuasion techniques that will change your life. And that's not hyperbole.

Showing results for: ‘Len Deighton’

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