Mother Tongue : The English Language Jacques Maquet gossip and snobberies of provincial

gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life

he dreams of riding far away from them

This remains our curator's favourite book of the Thriller genre

eccentric expats to mind-boggling repasts

Mother Tongue : The English Language Jacques Maquet gossip and snobberies of provincialOnly Bill Bryson could make a book about the English language so entertaining. With his boundless enthusiasm and restless eye for the absurd, this is his astonishing tour of English. From its mongrel origins to its status as the world's most spoken tongue; its apparent simplicity to its deceptive complexity; its vibrant swearing to its uncertain spelling and pronunciation; Bryson covers all this as well as the many curious eccentricities that make it