Steve Roud was Local Studies Librarian for the London Borough of Croydon and served as Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society for over fifteen years. He has been researching British folklore for over thirty years and is the joint author of the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, plus other books on traditional drama and folk song, and the Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland, which won the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award in 2004. His publications include London Lore (2008) and The Lore of the Playground (2010). He also compiles the Folk Song Index and the Broadside Index, two internationally acclaimed computer databases of traditional folk and popular song. He lives in Sussex.

Steve Roud

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Charlie Croker

Have you ever arrived in a hotel room and been baffled by the information provided? 
Beware of your luggage. 
In your room you will find a minibar which is filled with alcoholics. 
Do not throw urine around. 
 
Have you ever been to a restaurant and wondered what on earth to order? 
Bored Meat Stew 
Lorry Driver Soup 
Kiss Lorraine 
 
Have you ever arrived in an airport and found that the supposedly helpful signs just make you feel more lost? 
You are required to declare all sorts of private things. 
Departure. Bus stop. Car rectal. 
Please buy your ticket consciously. 
 
Charlie Croker has, and in 2006 he gathered together what he thought was the definitive collection of English language howlers for his bestselling book Lost in Translation. But he reckoned without the great British public. Not only was the book a smash hit, it also opened the floodgates to a deluge of emails and letters stuffed full of further mistranslations and mutilated phrases. From a leaflet from the Museum of Rasputin in Russia (which is apparently situated in a house that belonged a pilot fish Zubov) to a song title on a pirated Pink Floyd CD (Come Fartably Numb), the scrambled sentences just kept flooding in. At the same time Charlie has continued his travels and picked up gems of his own. With such a wealth of material, a sequel wasn't just a necessity, it was a public service, and Still Lost in Translation is even more addictive, whimsical and side-splittingly hilarious than the first book.

Still Lost in Translation

More misadventures in English abroad

Philip Dodd

What is the connection between a rather unflattering item of clothing and the French trapeze artist Jules Léotard? Which filling did the Earl of Sandwich opt for when he made his great culinary invention? And was there really a Sir Oswald Binge whose week-long feasts were notorious for their excess? 
The Reverend Guppy's Aquarium answers these and many other questions drawn from the remoter corners of the English language, exploring the lives of an extraordinarily diverse range of people who happen to have one thing in common: by chance or deliberately, they have left their names deeply embedded in the language and consciousness of future generations. Each figure has something to tell us about a moment in history, or a discovery or invention, whether it's László Biró and his pioneering writing implement, or Étienne de Silhouette who, having fallen from grace at the French court, spent much of the later part of his life mournfully cutting out paper shapes. Not to mention the Reverend Robert Lechmere Guppy, fish-discoverer extraordinaire. 
Each life in The Reverend Guppy's Aquarium is quirky and often bizarre. Few of them would merit a footnote, let alone an entry, in the history books. But they all reveal that the prospect of immortality is only a fluke away. In an age of instant 15-minute celebrity, that's a reassuring thought.

The Reverend Guppy's Aquarium

How Jules Leotard, Adolphe Sax, Roy Jacuzzi and co. immortalised their names in the dictionary

Benjamin Dreyer

'An utterly delightful book to read, Dreyer's English will stand among the classics on how to use the English language properly.' ELIZABETH STROUT 
 
'A complete joy. For those who care about words - and for those who don't - Dreyer's English is the book we have all been waiting for. Wise, funny, no-nonsense, stylish and brilliantly practical.' RACHEL JOYCE 
_____________ 
An indispensable, New York Times-bestselling guide to the craft of writing from Random House's long-time copy chief and one of Twitter's leading language gurus. 
 
We all write, all the time: books, blogs, tweets, emails, emails, emails - and we all want to write better. Benjamin Dreyer is here to help. 
 
As copy chief of Random House, Dreyer has upheld the standards of the legendary publisher for more than two decades. He is beloved by authors and editors alike - not to mention his followers on social media - for playfully, brilliantly deconstructing the English language. Dreyer's English is the distillation of everything he has learned from copyediting thousands of books, the perfect guide not just for writers but for everyone who wants to put their best prose foot forward. 
 
Both authoritative and amusing, Dreyer's English offers lessons on punctuation, from the underloved semicolon to the enigmatic en-dash; the rules and non-rules of grammar, including why it's OK to begin a sentence with 'And' or 'But' and to confidently split an infinitive; and why it's best to avoid the doldrums of the Wan Intensifiers and Throat Clearers, including 'very', 'rather', 'of course', and the dreaded 'actually'. 
 
And yes: 'Only godless savages eschew the Oxford comma.' 
 
Stuffed with advice, insider wisdom, and fun facts, this book will prove to be invaluable to everyone who wants to shore up their writing skills, mandatory for people who spend their time editing and shaping other people's prose, and - perhaps best of all - an utter treat for anyone who simply revels in language. 
_____________ 
This book is written in British English. 
_____________ 
'Benjamin Dreyer's brilliant, pithy, incandescently intelligent book is to contemporary writing what Geoffrey Chaucer's poetry was to medieval English: a gift that broadens and deepens the art and the science of literature' JON MEACHAM 
 
'A fascinating guide to grammatical 'rights' and 'wrongs' - practical and useful' SEBASTIAN FAULKS, SUNDAY TIMES 
 
'A pleasing read for anyone who has an appreciation for the written word.' TIME MAGAZINE, BEST 10 NON-FICTION BOOKS OF 2019 
 
'Witty and piquant [...] full of jokes - and equally full of deliciously deprecating footnotes.' JEWISH CHRONICLE 
 
'Playful, smart, self-conscious, and personal . . . One encounters wisdom and good sense on nearly every page of Dreyer's English.' WALL STREET JOURNAL 
 
'A mind-blower--sure to jumpstart any writing project, just by exposing you, the writer, to Dreyer's astonishing level of sentence-awareness.' GEORGE SAUNDERS, author of Lincoln in the Bardo 
 
'Benjamin Dreyer is wise and bitterly experienced and fantastically good company. You should buy his book and read it.' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 
 
'Boisterously well written ... I recommend it highly.' INDEPENDENT 
 
'Dreyer promises to reveal "some of the fancy little tricks I've come across or devised that can make even skilled writing better", and does so with accuracy, style, and humour' GUARDIAN 
 
'This work is that rare writing handbook that writers might actually want to read straight through, rather than simply consult.' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style

The UK Edition

Albert Jack

Did you know that an assassin is a hashish-eater and a yokel a country woodpecker? 
 
That Dr Mesmer mesmerised patients back to health or that Samuel Pepys enjoyed a good game of handicap? 
 
While we're at it, what have spondulics to do with spines or lawyers with avocados? 
 
In It's a Wonderful Word, bestselling author Albert Jack collects over 500 of the strangest, funniest-sounding and most delightful words in the English language, and traces them back to their often puzzling origins. While brushing up on your gibberish or gobbledygook, discover why bastards should resent travelling salesmen, why sheets should remain on tenterhooks and why you should never set down a tumbler before finishing your drink. 
 
From blotto to bamboozle and from claptrap to quango, Albert Jack's addictive anecdotes bring the world's most colourful language to life and are guaranteed to surprise and entertain.

It's a Wonderful Word

The Real Origins of Our Favourite Words

Mark Abley

Mark Abley takes the reader on a world-wide trip like no other - from Singapore to Japan, Oxford to Los Angeles, through the web and even back in time. As much a travel book as a linguistic study, this book goes beyond grammar and vocabulary; more importantly, this book is about the people of the world. 
 
On his travels Abley encounters bloggers, translators, novelists, therapists, dictionary makers, hip-hop performers and web-savvy teenagers. He talks to a married couple who were passionately corresponding online before they met in 'meatspace.' And he listens to teenagers, puzzling out the words they coin in chat rooms and virtual worlds. 
 
Lively, evocative, passionate and hilarious, this is a book for everyone who cherishes the words we use.

The Prodigal Tongue

Dispatches from the Future of English

Half the world's languages are threatened with extinction over the next century, as English and the rest of the world's top twenty languages drive all before them. What ways of looking at the world will die along with them, what cultural riches, what experiences, histories and memories? And how does it feel to be one of the last remaining speakers of a language that is on its way to extinction? What chance is there of saving any of these languages? Is it feasible in the long term or even worthwhile? 
 
Mark Abley's journeys among the speakers of languages at the brink takes him to aboriginal Australia (where he meets the last surviving fluent male speaker of Mati Ke, who cannot speak to the only other fluent speaker, as she is his sister and in their culture it is forbidden to speak to siblings once one has reached puberty) and to American Indian reservations, as well as to places where the languages are fighting back - Wales, the Faeroe islands, the Isle of Man - whilst also charting the triumphant return of Hebrew.

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