With Christmas coming up, I’d like your recommendations for books about language. I’m looking for something more substantial and engaging than, say, Lynne Truss but not as demanding as a full-blown academic linguistics textbook.
Three books I’ve heard encouraging things about are:
- Strictly English by Simon Heffer
- The Language Wars: A History of Proper English by Henry Hitchings
- The King’s English by Kingsley Amis
Are they any good? Are any others any good?
Stroppy Editor 
Comments
I’ve got a Cambridge encyclopaedia (which spells itself encyclopedia for some reason) of the English language by David Crystal. It’s a lot of Dorling Kindersley kind of fun (and usefully so). There’s another book by the same author called The English Language which I also remember liking very much. Though its current version is over 300 pages according to Amazon – I don’t recall it being that long at all.
Well, I had a look at Crystal’s website and he reckons Heffer’s book is a shambles – so I think I’ll take that off the list…
I haven’t read the Kingsley Amis book, but it’s likely to be idiosyncratically pedantic (if there’s such a thing) – surely a good thing as far as language is concerned …
I have been thoroughly enjoying Stanley Dubinsky and Chris Holcomb’s “Understanding Language Through Humor”.
To complement Crystal’s review of Strictly English, here is Geoffrey Pullum’s. It’s even more severe. I second Mil’s recommendations of Crystal’s books; his more recent Evolving English and The Story of English in 100 Words are also very informative and enjoyable.
I haven’t read Hitchings’ book but I’ve heard good things about it. It’s on my to-read pile. And something tells me you’d like Steven Poole’s Unspeak, if you haven’t read it already.
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