‘confounded their language’ Genesis, 11:7
‘the greatest wonder in England’ The Literary Gazette and Journal of the Belles Lettres, arts, sciences &c, James Moyes, 1829
‘answering questions, telling the hour of the day’ Charles Dickens, as quoted in Jay’s Journal of Anomolies, Conjurers, Cheats, Hustlers, Hoaxsters, Pranksters, Jokesters, Imposters, Pretenders, Side-Show Showmen, Armless Calligraphers, Mechanical Marvels, Popular Entertainments, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001
‘The greatest curiosity of the present day’ Billboard for Toby the Sapient Pig, 1817
‘… spell and read, play at cards’ Billboard for Toby the Sapient Pig, 1817
‘A program of research’ Dwight ‘Wayne’ Batteau, Man/Dolphin Communication Final Report 1966–1967
‘The dolphins were able to’ Louis Herman, Cognition, Herman, Richards, & Wolz, 1984
‘Their capacity for communication’ Robert Frederking as quoted in ‘Whatever happened to … talking dolphins’, Susan Kruglinski, Discover magazine, 2006
‘… about as likely that an ape’ Noam Chomsky, interviewed by Matt Aames Cucchiaro in ‘On the Myth of Ape Language’, email correspondence 2007–8
‘How do you reconcile a tiny chimp’ Jenny Lee, as quoted in Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human, Elizabeth Hess, Random House, 2008
‘Put the pine needles in the refrigerator’ Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Kanzi and novel sentences video, greatapetrust.org
‘I used to think my aim’ Dr Cathy Price, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Language Acquisition Device’ (LAD), Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, MIT Press, 1965
‘Human communication’ Michael Tomasello, Origins of Human Communication, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008
‘I’m at the front of the lecture hall’ ibid.
‘This is hopefully the first’ Dr Wolfgang Enard, BBC News, 2002
‘Language at a bare minimum’ Steven Pinker, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘… there also has to be some kind of talent’ ibid.
‘ “All gone sticky” … Now that doesn’t correspond’ Steven Pinker, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘ “More outside” .… That’s quite a cognitive feat’ ibid.
‘ “He sticked it on the paper”, ‘He teared the paper”, “We holded the baby rabbits” ibid.
‘It’s an extremely powerful’ ibid.
‘Jean: Okay, Okay, now this is another creature, this one’s called a tass. That’s a tass’ Jean Berko Gleason, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Young kids’ brains are not formed’ ibid.
‘foster mothers and nurses’ Salimbene di Adam, Chronicle of Salimbene De Adam edited by J.L Baird, G Baglivi and J.R. Kane (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies), Binghamton, NY, April 1986
‘Some say they spoke good Hebrew’ Robert Lyndsay of Pitscottie as quoted in Old and New Edinburgh, James Grant, Cassell & Co, 1880
‘It is more likely they would scream’ Sir Walter Scott, as quoted in ‘The Bird Man of Stirling’, BBC History
‘First he embraced her with his armes’ Vicar of St Martin’s Church, Tudor Era, Headline History website
‘[The] two, when they chanced to meet’ Richard Carew, Survey of Cornwall 1602, Mark Press, 2000
‘there comes in that Dumb boy’ Samuel Pepys, The Diaries of Samuel Pepys, Penguin Classics, 2003
‘The deaf tend’ Janiece Brotton, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Syntax, the constraints on language’ Judy Shepherd-Kegl, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Can’t express your feelings’ Adrian Perez, CBS News, 2009
‘The single gesture doesn’t have rhythm’ Judy Shepherd-Kegyl, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘If you’re beyond the critical period’ ibid.
‘You know, we can look back’ ibid.
‘If you have children you’ve had the experience’ ibid.
‘To have a second language is to have a second soul’ Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor
‘I speak French to my ambassadors’ Frederick the Great of Prussia
‘(language) is not merely a reproducing instrument’ Benjamin Whorf, Language, Thought and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, MIT Press, 1964
‘When my wishes conflict with my family’s’ As quoted by Lee Gardenswartz and Anita Rowe, Managing Diversity: A Complete Desk Reference and Planning Guide, Jossey Bass, 1993
‘In English, we tend to divide our space’ Lera Boroditsky, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011.
‘Chicken and egg isn’t the right way’ ibid.
‘Nearly all of my labours’ Jacob Grimm, Selbstbiographie, from Kleinere Schriften Vol 1 F. Dümmler, Berlin, 1864
‘To réecs éhest (“Once there was a king”)’ J. P. Mallory and D. G. Adams, Encyclopaedia of Indo-European Culture, Fitzroy Dearbon Publishers, 1997
‘Oh no. No, no, no, no!’ Zaha Bustema, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Learn well the language of the whites’ Anonymous, Hawaii, 1896
‘In the old days,’ Aju, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘At my home I speak Akha’ Aju, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Irish golfer’, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘We next reached Skibbereen …’ James Mahony, The Illustrated London News, 1847
‘I have been assured’ Jonathan Swift, Modest Proposal (for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public), Prometheus Books UK, September 1995
‘If we allow one of the finest’ Douglas Hyde, An leabhar sgeulaigheachta, Dublin Gill, 1889
‘I would earnestly appeal’ Douglas Hyde, The Necessity for De-anglicising Ireland, Academic Press, Leiden, 1994
‘The Gaelic League restored the language to its place’ Michael Collins, The Path To Freedom, Talbot Press Ltd, Dublin 1922
‘to build up a Celtic and Irish school of dramatic literature’ Lady Augusta Persse Gregory, Our Irish Theatre: A Chapter of Autobiography, GP Putnam’s Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, New York and London, 1913
‘as calm and collected as Queen Victoria’ As quoted by Carmel Joyce, Inspirational Figures from Irish History (Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory, Samuel Beckett, playwrights), World of Hibernia, 2000
‘You have to remember that Irish as a language was spoken up till the 1840s and 50s by many, perhaps the majority of Irish people’ Declan Kiberd, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘I know that if you were to speak’ Hugh Farley, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘I think that we have as a nation’ ibid.
‘ “nam alii oc, alii si, alii vero dicunt oil” ’ (‘Some say oc, others say si, others say oïl” ’) Dante, De Vulgari Eloquentia (Cambridge Medieval Classics), translated by Steve Botterill, Cambridge University Press, 1996
‘The monarchy had reasons to resemble the Tower of Babel’ Bertrand Barère, National Convention, 1794
‘My grandparents speak Breton too’ Nicolas de la Casiniere, Ecoles Diwan, La Bosse du Breton, 1998
‘Instead of setting their ambitions’ Frédéric Mistral, Speech to the Félibres of Catalonia as quoted by Jennifer Michael in Journal of American Folklore 111, American Folklore Society, 1998
‘in recognition of the fresh originality’ Frédéric Mistral, The Nobel Foundation, 1904
‘I was profoundly shocked’ President Chirac, EU Summit, March 2006, as reported in Nicholas Watt and David Gow, ‘Chirac vows to fight growing use of English’, Guardian, 25 March 2006
‘… because that is the accepted business language of Europe today’ Ernest-Antoine Seilliere, as quoted in ‘Chirac upset by English address’, BBC News, 24 March 2006
‘But you know, what they, the regional languages, have lost is not too much’ Marc Fumaroli, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Jesus said, “Love is everything” ’ Dr Ghil’ad Zuckermann, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Israeli is a very complex language’ ibid.
‘The Hebrew language can live only if we revive the nation’ Eliezer Ben Yehuda as quoted in Jew! Speak Hebrew, Aliyon, 2005, on the Jewish Agency for Israel website www.jafi.org.il
‘In a heavy atmosphere’ David Yudeleviz, as quoted by Ilan Stavans ‘Crusoe in Israel’, Pakn Treger: The magazine of the Yiddish Book Center, No. 58, December 2009, yiddishbookcenter.org
‘Yiddish speaks itself beneath Israeli’ Dr Ghil’ad Zuckermann, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Yiddish has not yet said its last word’ Isaac Bashevis Singer, Nobel Lectures 1978, Literature 1968–80, World Scientific Publishing Company, Singapore, 1993
‘There is one people – Jews … and its language is – Yiddish’ I. L. Peretz, quoted in Dr Birnboym’s Vokhnblat #2, Czernowitz, 1908 (translated by Marvin Zuckerman and Marion Herbst from Nakhmen Meisel, Briv unredes fun, YKUF, New York, 1944)
‘It’s a great language for saying the man’s a dick’ Stewie Stone, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘The nebach is the guy getting the water when you’re going on a football team’ Ari Teman, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘For an older Jewish audience’ Stewie Stone, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘I sent a rabbi a joke’ Ari Teman, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘When one Jew meets another Jew’ Stewie Stone, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Yiddish is basically our soul’ ibid.
‘I grew up, and I was bah mitzvahed’ ibid.
‘Hebrew comes from the vocal chords’ ibid.
‘a serous and watery purgative motion’ John Wilkins, An Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language, The Royal Society, 1668, Thoemmes Continuum, Facsimile Ed edition, January 2002
‘I was taught that all men were brothers’ Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof in a letter to N. Borovko, 1895, quoted by David Poulson in Origin of Esperanto July 1998
‘We believe it is a language’ Littlewoods, BBC News, July 2008
‘If you lose a contract to a Moroccan rival’ Jean Paul Nerriere, Parlez Globish, Eyrolles, 2006
‘It’s a proletarian and popular idiom’ ibid.
‘The only jokes which cross frontiers’ Jean Paul Nerriere, as quoted by Adam Sage, ‘Globish cuts English down to size’, The Times, December 2006
‘I am helping the rescue of French’ Jean Paul Nerriere, Parlez Globish, Eyrolles, April 2006
‘To make up a non-human language’ Mark Okrand, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘because there’s lots of zees and zots in science fiction’ ibid.
‘We arrived on the set one day’ ibid.
‘You have not experienced Shakespeare’ ibid.
‘My son was born in 1994’ ibid.
‘Well, he was learning it’ Dr d’Ormond Speers, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘I would say something to him in Klingon’ ibid.
‘The reason this language is so successful’ Arika Okrent, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Well, it’s given me a deeper appreciation’ ibid.
‘A language is a dialect with an army and a navy’ Max Weinreich, Der yivo un di problemen fun undzer tsayt, New York, 1945
‘long es and very slow’; ‘they don’t say their ts’ Ian McMillan, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘harsh … it’s to do with the harsh winds’ ibid.
‘That’s where an isogloss happens’ ibid.
‘My Aunty Mabel, who was from Chesterfield’ ibid.
‘Whenever I speak in my voice’ ibid.
‘So, somehow, the language carries on’ ibid.
‘When the word dies’ Ian McMillan, ‘Utopia! If you frame thissen properly, that is’, Yorkshire Post, 23 August 2010
‘And when I was first on the radio’ Ian McMillan, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘It is the business of educated people’ Arthur Burrell, as quoted in the Journal of International Phonetic Association, 1987, p. 21
‘One hears the most appalling travesties’ John Reith, Broadcast Over Britain, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1924
‘be able to recognize instantly’ BBC 1940
‘And to all in the North, good neet’ Wilfred Pickles, BBC Radio, c.1940
‘It is impossible for an Englishman’ George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion (Preface to Pygmalion) Penguin Classics, revised edition, January 2003
‘Having one’s cards engraved … ’ Professor Alan Ross in Nancy Mitford (ed.), Noblesse Oblige: An Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy, 1956
‘Phone for the fish knives, Norman’ John Betjeman in Nancy Mitford (ed.), Noblesse Oblige: An Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy, Hamish Hamilton, 1956
‘Can a non-U-speaker become a U-speaker?’ Professor Alan Ross in Nancy Mitford (ed.), Noblesse Oblige: An Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy, Hamish Hamilton, 1956
‘Why should they hide it?’ Lawrence Fenley, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘In the twenty-first century’ ibid.
‘It is only when, usually, you have an issue’ ibid.
‘May it be forbidden that we should ever speak like BBC announcers’ Wilfred Pickles, Between You and Me, Werner Laurie. Reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd
‘Barnsley’s what I think with’ Ian McMillan, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Those are the heavy seven’ George Carlin, ‘Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television’, Class Clown, Atlantic, 1972
‘But words are words. I never did hear / That the bruised heart was pierced through the ear’ William Shakespeare, Othello, (1:2, 218–19) Penguin Classics, New Ed edition, 2005
‘Not one of them would sit down,’ Captain James Cook, James Cook: The Journals, Penguin Classics, 2003
‘I would hear things’ Timothy Jay, BBC, Fry’s Planet Word, 2011
‘It’s like using the horn on your car’ ibid.
‘As soon as kids can speak, they’re using swear words’ Professor Timothy Jay, Cursing in America, John Benjamins, Philadelphia, 1992
‘Cathartic swearing comes from a primal rage circuit’ Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought, Allen Lane, 2007
‘I had noises’ Jess Thom, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘It’s going all the time biscuit’ ibid.
‘I was speaking to my dad on the phone’ ibid.
‘Absolutely. I think lots of people misunderstand Tourette’s’ ibid.
‘The response is not only emotional but involuntary’ Steven Pinker, Why We Curse: What the F***? New Republic magazine, August 2007
‘One of mankind’s greatest-ever living language centres’ Peter Silverton, Filthy English: The How, Why, When and What of Everyday Swearing, Portobello Books, 2009
‘In my mind I’d say that’ Les Duhigg, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘I was always apologizing for him’ Marion Duhigg, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘We had a chap in the stroke group’ ibid.
‘It’s like being born again’ Les Duhigg, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Richard: So, Stephen, when you put your hand in the water …
‘Stephen: That is cold actually … ’ Dr Richard Stephens, Brian Blessed and Stephen Fry, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Please could you take this note, ram it up his hairy inbox and pin it to his fucking prostrate’ Armando Ianucci, The Thick of It: The Rise of the Nutters, BBC 2007
‘There was that world which lived off a twenty-four-hour news cycle’ Armando Ianucci, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘The last thing I want is every programme’ ibid.
‘Euphemism is such a pervasive human phenomenon’ Joseph Williams, quoted in Ralph Keyes, Euphemania: Our Love Affair With Euphemisms, Little Brown, 2010
‘This Earl of Oxford making his low obeisance’ John Aubrey, Brief Lives, Penguin, new edition, 1972
‘Not a man swears but pays his twelve pence’ Oliver Cromwell, quoted in An Anatomy of Swearing, Ashley Montague, University of Pensylvannia Press, March 2001
‘I’d like breast’ Winston Churchill, Virginia, 1929, quoted by Celia Sandys, Chasing Churchill: Travels With Winston Churchill, Harper Collins, new edition, 2004
‘We had an auxiliary who was Portuguese’ Julia Saunders, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Ah, isn’t that nice’ Harry Carpenter at the 1977 Oxford–Cambridge boat race
‘It hangs like flax on a distaff’ William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, 1:3,16, Penguin Classics, new edition, 2005
‘They don’t pay their sixpences’ Marie Lloyd, quoted in The New York Telegraph, 14 November 1897
‘… significant moment in English history’ T. S. Eliot, Selected Essays, Faber and Faber, London, 1941
‘When roses are red’ Max Miller quoted in John M. East, Max Miller: The Cheeky Chappie, Robson Books Ltd, new edition, 1998
‘I know exactly what you are saying’ ibid.
‘Programmes must at all cost be kept free of crudities’ The Little Green Book, BBC 1949
‘In Hackney Wick there lives a lass’ Barry Took and Marty Feldman, ‘Rambling Syd Rumpo’, Round The Horne, BBC Radio
‘Mrs Slocombe: Before we go any further, Mr Rumbold’ David Croft and Jeremy Lloyd, Are You Being Served?: ‘Our Figures Are Slipping’, series 1, episode 3, BBC 1973
‘The twittering of the birds all day, the bumblebees at play’ Ronnie Barker, The Two Ronnies, BBC
‘I spend all day just crawling through the grass’ Peter Brewis, ‘The Two Ninnies’, Not The Nine O’Clock News, 1982
‘When, 20 years ago, Molly Sugden’ David Baddiel
She was pleased to see his tender won’ I’m Sorry, I Haven’t A Clue, BBC Radio 4
‘I know, for example, that the lovely Farad here’ Omid Djalili, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘My parents often had English people around’ ibid.
‘I just said thank you very much to Farad’ ibid.
‘My wife, who’s British, said’ Omid Djalili, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘To be called a bald, fat fart to your face’ ibid.
‘You couldn’t operate on a yacht’ Matt Allen, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘It strikes everyone as an extreme case’ A. P. Rossiter, Our Living Language, Longman’s Green & Co., 1953
‘But do not give it to a lawyer’s clerk to write’ Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Vintage Classics, new edition, 2007
‘Upon any such default’ Security Agreement, Harbour Equity Partners, LLC, November 2010
‘The physical progressing of building cases’ Sir Ernest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1955
‘It may be said that no harm is done’ ibid.
‘good and useful …’ Sir Ernest Gowers, The Complete Plain Words, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1955
‘is the verbal sleight of hand’ David Lehman, Sign of the Times: Destruction and Fall of Paul De Man, Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1991
‘Proactive, self-starting facilitator required’ quoted by Christopher Howse, ‘At the end of the day, you’ve given 110 per cent’, Telegraph, 14 June 2007
‘Using language as a way of obscuring the truth’ Ian Hislop, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘It starts in management consultancies’ ibid.
‘What amuses me is the same management’ ibid.
‘Doublespeak is a language which pretends to communicate’ William Lutz, The New Doublespeak, Harper Collins, 1996
‘unlawful and arbitrary deprivation of life’ US State Department annual report, 1984
‘Nazism permeated the flesh and blood of the people’ Victor Klamperer, Lingua Tertii Imperii (The Language of the Third Reich), Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006
‘the barbed wire was not facing the West’ Gunter Böhnke, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘My mother lost her purse’ ibid.
‘Every joke is a tiny revolution’ George Orwell, ‘Funny But Not Vulgar’ and Other Selected Essays and Journalism, The Folio Society, 1998
‘Erich Honecker arrives at his office early one morning’ Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, The Lives of Others, Buena Vista Pictures, 2006
‘We’re in a no-win, damned if you do and damned if you don’t scenario’ Peter Jackson, quoted in ‘Jackson Talks Dam Busters: Controversial decision looms for WWII remake’, IGN website, 6 September 2006
‘David Howard should not have quit’ Julian Bond quoted in Donald Demarco, ‘Acting Niggardly’, Social Justice Review 91, No. 3–4, March–April 2000
‘I’d go to school on the Monday’ Stephen K. Amos, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘When people say political correctness has gone mad’ ibid.
‘special vocabulary of tramps or thieves’ 1756, Online Etymology Dictionary, etymonline.com
‘the dirtiest dregs of the wandering beggars’ Alexander Gil as quoted by Henry Hitchens in The Language Wars: A History of Proper English, John Murray, February 2011
‘that poisonous and most stinking ulcer of our state’ Alexander Gil, Logonomia Anglica, Scolar Press, reissue of 1621 edition, February 1969
‘the continual corruption of our English tongue’ Jonathan Swift, Tatler, No. 230, September 1710
‘the choice of certain words’ ibid.
‘an epithet which in the English vulgar language’ Francis Grose, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1785, University of Michigan Library, April 2009
‘The freedom of thought and speech’ ibid.
‘I have never seen a man of more original observation’ Robert Burns, in a letter to Mrs Dunlop from Ellisland on 17 July 1789, as quoted by Jennifer Orr, BBC website, Robert Burns
‘low habits, general improvidence …’ John Camden Hotton, A Dictionary of Slang, Cant and Vulgar Words, Taylor and Greening, 1860
‘I likes a top o’ reeb’ Henry Mayhew, ‘London Labour and the London Poor’, The Morning Chronicle, 1851
‘the wandering tribes of London’; ‘There exists in London a singular tribe of men’ John Camden Hotton, A Dictionary Of Modern Slang, Cant, And Vulgar Words, Taylor and Greening, 1860
‘harristocrats of the streets’ ibid.
‘A citizen of London, being in the country’ Francis Grose, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1785, University of Michigan Library, April 2009
‘one born within the sound of Bow bell, that is in the City of London’ John Minsheu, Ductor in Linguas (Guide into the Tongues) and Vocabularium Hispanicolatinum (A Most Copious Spanish Dictionary) (1617), Scholars Facsimilies & Reprint, May 1999
‘Yankee Doodle came to London, just to ride the ponies’ George M. Cohen, ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’, 1942
‘pulling someone’s pants up sharply to wedge them between the buttocks’ Jonathan E. Lighter, Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Vol. 2: H–O, Random House Reference, 1997
‘Oh, it’s the tourists … I’m not Listerine but they get on my goat’ Stephen Fry, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Well, we’re losing it, aren’t we?’ London Cab Driver, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘A Cockney has got a cheerful way about him’ ibid.
‘As feely ommes, we would zhoosh our riah’ Peter Burton, Parallel Lives, Gay Men’s Press, 1985
‘Hello. Is there anybody there?’ Barry Took and Marty Feldman, ‘Julian and Sandy’, Round the Horne, BBC Radio
‘Omes and palones of the jury’ Barry Took and Marty Feldman, ‘Bona Law’, Round the Horne, BBC Radio
‘a miracle of dexterity at the cottage upright’ Barry Took and Marty Feldman, ‘Julian and Sandy: Bona Performers’, Round the Horne, BBC Radio
‘In the beginning, Gloria created the heaven and the earth’ The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, King James Bible into Polari in 2003, as quoted by Christopher Bryant, Paul Baker: How Bona to Vada Your Dolly Old Eek, Polari Magazine, 3 December 2008
‘A lot of English people see Australians as a recessive gene’ Kathy Lette, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘This is accounted for by the number of individuals’ Peter Cunningham, Two Years in New South Wales, Henry Colburn, 1827
‘Pommy is supposed to be short for pomegranate’ D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo, Penguin Classics, new edition, 1986
‘I think it’s something to do with our Irish heritage’ Kathy Lette, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘We shorten everything’ ibid.
‘I’ve met six British prime ministers’ Stephen Fry, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘having a black belt in tongue-fu’ Kathy Lette, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘gutless spivs’ Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, quoted by Nick Stace in ‘Taking Insults to a New Level’, My Telegraph, September 2010
‘brain-damaged’; ‘mangy maggot’; ‘the little dessicated coconut’ Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, quoted by Patrick Carlyon in ‘Ex-PM Paul Keating the heckler we had to have’, Herald Sun, 3 November 2009
‘like being savaged by a dead sheep’ Denis Healey on Sir Geoffrey Howe, Hansard, 14 June 1978, col. 1027
‘into the mysteries of Australian colloquial speech’ Barry Humphries ‘The Adventures of Barry McKenzie’, Private Eye, c.1960
‘Barry is hugely observant’ John Clarke, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘relied on indecency for its humour’ Australian Department of Customs and Excise, quoted in The Mythical Australian: Barry Humphries, Gough Whitlam and ‘new nationalism’, Anne Pender, The Australian Journal of Politics and History, March 2005
‘It’s very seldom that someone like Barry Humphries comes along’ John Clarke, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘The American influence is huge’ Kathy Lette, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘the practice of spending the night on other people’s couches’ Vicki Estes, ‘Seen the dictionary lately? OMG!’ Topeka Journal, 10 April 2011
‘a boring or socially inept person’; ‘the wives and girlfriends’ ‘Oxford English Dictionary: other new words and definitions’, Telegraph, 24 March 2011
‘Wag is notable’ Graeme Diamond, editor of Oxford English Dictionary
‘a protuberance of flesh’ Dave Masters, ‘OMG in the OED? LOL!’, Sun, 24 March 2011
‘has apparently taken over from Shakespeare’ Mark Liberman, Homeric Objects of Desire, 2005
‘D’oh … expressing frustrations’ Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford University Press, 2001
‘The Canadian election was so meh’ Collins English Dictionary, ninth edition, Collins, 4 June 2007
‘widespread unselfconscious usage’ Graeme Diamond, quoted in ‘Meh– the word that’s sweeping the internet’, Michael Hann, Guardian, 5 March 2007
‘He’s embiggened that role with his cromulent performance’ The Simpsons: Lisa the Iconoclast, season seven, episode 16, David X Cohen, Fox, 1996
‘there is a competing effect’ Riccardo Argurio, Matteo Bertolini, Sebastián Franco, Shamit Kachru, Gauge/gravity duality and meta-stable dynamical supersymmetry breaking, the Institute of Physics Publishing, 2007
‘O hart tht sorz’ Eileen Bridge, runner-up in the T - Mobile txt laureate competition, quoted in David Crystal, ‘2b or not 2b’, Guardian, 5 July 2008
‘Verona was de turf of de feuding Montagues and de Capulet families’ Martin Baum, To Be Or Not To Be, Innit, Bright Pen, 2008
‘John’s girlfriend is really pretty’ ‘Say what? A parents’ guide to UK teenage slang’, BBC News school report, 11 March 2010
‘John’s chick is proper buff’ Phoenix High School, Shepherd’s Bush, West London, ‘Say what? A parents’ guide to UK teenage slang’, BBC News school report, 11 March 2010
‘Jonny’s bird is proper fit’ Holy Family Catholic Church, Keighley, West Yorkshire, ‘Say what? A parents’ guide to UK teenage slang’, BBC News school report, 11 March 2010
‘John’s missus is flat out bangin’’ Bishopston Comprehensive School, Swansea, Wales, ‘Say what? A parents’ guide to UK teenage slang’, BBC News school report, 11 March 2010
‘Berkeley is one of the most diverse places you’ll ever be’ Connor, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘It can change in one day’ Berkeley High Students, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘The word rap was used in the black community’ H. Samy Alim, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘It’s metaphors’ Kenard ‘K2’ Karter, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘The MCing or rapping is a verbal art form’ H. Samy Alim, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘You step up into the cipher’ ibid.
‘From a language perspective’ Kenard ‘K2’ Karter, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘And that is what some people view as cultural theft’ H. Samy Alim, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘My president, your country is dead’ El General, ‘Rais Le Bled’ (President, Your People) quoted in Vivienne Walt, ‘El Général and the Rap Anthem of the Mideast Revolution’, Time, 5 February 2011
‘The revolution is a social movement’ Balti as quoted by Neil Curry in ‘Tunisia’s rappers provide a soundtrack to a revolution’, CNN World, 2 March 2011
‘Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Morocco, all must be liberated’ El General, An Ode to Arab Revolution, as quoted in Hip-hop for revolution by Clark Boyd, PRI’s The World, 8 February 2011
‘Without words, without writing and without books, there would be no history’ Herman Hesse
‘Writing put agreements, laws, commandments on record’ H. G. Wells, A Short History of the World, Penguin Classics, 2006
‘For example, initially there would be a sign’ Irving Finkel, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘They were afraid of disease and impotence’ ibid.
‘Let us ask ourselves, positively, flatly’ René Etiemble as quoted in Writing: The Story of Alphabets and Scripts by Georges Jean, Harry N. Abrams, March 1992
‘Ventris was able to see’ John Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B, Cambridge University Press, 1958
‘He who first shortened the labor of copyists’ Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, Oxford Paperbacks, June 2008
‘for there is so great diversity in English’ Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, Penguin Classics, 2004
‘There is an ebb and flow of all conditions of men’ Alain-René Lesage, La Valise Trouvée, Imprimerie Nationale, 30 October 2002
‘Diderot knew English’ Kate Tunstall, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘We know he had these dinners’ ibid.
‘An encyclopedia’ Denis Diderot, Encyclopedia: the complete illustrations, 1762–1777, New York: Harry N. Abrams; 1st edition, 1978
‘It has been compared to the impious Babel’ C.A. Sainte-Beuve, Portraits of the Eighteenth Century: Historic and Literary, Part II, translated by Katharine P. Wormeley, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905, pp. 89–128
‘This is the proportion …’ Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, abridged edition, Penguin Classics 31 May 1979
‘Wherever I turned my view’ Samuel Johnson (1755), Preface to the English Dictionary, paras 1–50, Dr Johnson’s Dictionary, Penguin Classics, 2005
‘… to refine our language to grammatical purity’ Samuel Johnson, The Rambler, No. 208, 14 March 1752
‘To make dictionaries is dull work’; ‘lexicographer’ Samuel Johnson, Dr Johnson’s Dictionary, Penguin Classics, 2005
‘I have protracted my work’ Samuel Johnson (1755), Preface to the English Dictionary, Dr Johnson’s Dictionary, Penguin Classics, 2005
‘Dotard’; ‘embryo’; ‘envy’; ‘eavesdropper’; ‘or jogger’; ‘oats’; ‘excise’ Samuel Johnson, Dr Johnson’s Dictionary, Penguin Classics, 2005
‘a wretched etymologist’ Thomas Macaulay, quoted by Jesse Sheidlower in Defining Moment, Bookforum, October 2005
‘most truly contemptible performances’ John Horne Took, quoted by Henry Hitchings, Dr Johnson’s Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Defined the World. John Murray, London, 2005
‘to the English speaking and English reading public’; ‘read books and make extracts for The Philological Society’s New English Dictionary’ ‘Dr Murray, Mill Hill, Middlesex, N.W.’ April 1879 Appeal, OED.com
‘a1548 Hall Chron., Hen. IV. (1550) 32b, Duryng whiche sickenes as Auctors write he caused his crowne to be set on the pillowe at his beddes heade’ William Chester Minor, OED.com
‘It’s constantly moving. It’s fascinating’; ‘It’s rather nice’ John Simpson, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘There’s an excitement about the cries and whispers and the solaces’ Stephen Fry, Fry’s Planet Word, 2011
‘Books are not absolutely dead things’ John Milton, Areopagitica, Standard Publications, Inc., July 2008
‘was the first to have put together a collection of books’ Strabo, quoted by Barbara Krasner-Khait in ‘Survivor: The History of the Library’, History magazine, October/November 2001
‘During Lent’ Barbara Krasner-Khait, ‘Survivor: The History of the Library’, History magazine, October/November 2001
‘I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library’ Bodleian Library oath.
‘some of those books so taken out by the Reformers were burnt’ Anthony Wood, as quoted in ‘The History of The Bodleian’, bodleian.ox.ac.uk
‘set up my Staffe at the Librarie dore in Oxon’ Thomas Bodley, as quoted by Jane Curran in ‘Looking back on Sir Thomas Bodley’, BBC Oxford, June 2009
‘We have staff whose job it is to keep stuff safe’ Richard Ovenden, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘The politicians of today and tomorrow are communicating with their friends’ Richard Ovenden, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘It’s always been part of what we see as “serving the whole republic of the learned” ’ Richard Ovenden, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Only he who has longed as I did for Saturdays to come’ Andrew Carnegie, quoted in The New York Times obituary, 12 August 1919
‘I choose free libraries as the best agencies for improving the’ Andrew Carnegie, as quoted in ‘The Andrew Carnegie Story’, carnegiebirthplace.com
‘Make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, make ’em wait’ Wilkie Collins as quoted by GW Dahlquist in ‘Make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, make ’em wait’, Guardian, 6 January 2007
‘Is Little Nell dead?’ Robert M.C. Jeffrey, Discovering Tong: Its History, Myths and Curiosities, Robert Jeffrey, April 2007
‘I’m a great goose to have given way so, but I couldn’t help it’ Lord Jeffrey, as quoted by Hattie Tyng Griswold, The Lives of Great Authors, A.C. McClurg and Company, Chicago, 1902
‘My taste is for the sensational novel’ G. K. Chesterton, The Spice of Life and Other Essays, Darwen Finlayson, 1964
‘I am an author’ Jakucho Setouchi, quoted by Dana Goodyear, ‘Letter from Japan, “I ♥ Novels” ’, The New Yorker, 22 December 2008
‘The book revolution which from the Renaissance on’ John Updike, BookExpo America, 2006
‘Print is where words go to die’ Jeff Jarvis, ‘Books will disappear. Print is where words go to die’, Guardian, 5 June 2006
‘One thing we’ve learned in the history of books’ Professor Robert Darnton, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘I’m very attached to books and to manuscripts’ ibid.
‘bring back that real book smell you miss so much’ Smellofbooks.com
‘So we’re taking in history through the ear as well as through the eye’ Professor Robert Darnton, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘atomic priesthood’ Thomas A. Sebeok, ‘Technical Report’ prepared for Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation Battelle Memorial Institute, April 1984
‘People change, culture changes’ John Lomberg, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘The other thing that seems to be universal is the notion of a storyboard’ John Lomberg, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘True Wit is Nature to advantage dress’d,’ Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, Yale University Press, 1961
‘What, old dad dead?’ Cyril Tourneur, The Revenger’s Tragedy, Nick Hern Books, 1996
‘Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve into a dew!’ William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1:2, 129–130, Penguin Classics, 2007
‘One might have expected natural selection’ Professor Steven Pinker, Toward a Consilient Study of Literature, Philosophy and Literature, volume 31, Number 1, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007
‘When you talk about it, you think about it in the back of your head’ Ernie Dingo, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘In the time before time began Bunjil’ ‘The Gariwerd Creation Story’ pamphlet
‘It’s both a rhyme and rhythm, and the rhythm is the heartbeat’ Ernie Dingo, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven’ Richmond Lattimore, The Odyssey of Homer, Harper Collins, 1965, reissued by HarperPerennial 1991, book I, lines 1–10, p. 27
‘So they sang, in sweet utterance, and the heart within me desired to listen’ ibid., book XII, lines 192–3, p. 190
‘Sing, Goddess, Achilles’ rage’ Professor Stanley Lombardo, The Iliad, Hackett Publishing Company, 1997, book I, lines 1–6
‘in which the whole plot is done backwards and the story winds up in futility and unhappiness’ Professor William Foster-Harris, The Basic Patterns of Plot, University of Oklahoma Press, new edition,1981
‘Plots of the body’; ‘plots of the mind’ Ronald Tobias, 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them, Walking Stick Press, March 2003
‘Nobody knows anything’ William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade, Futura Publications, 1990
‘Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it’ William Goldman, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘I was walking on 47th Street in New York – the diamond district’ ibid.
‘Is it safe?’ William Goldman, Marathon Man, Paramount Pictures, 1976
‘There’s no logic to it’ William Goldman, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘disappeared off with the Indians’ ibid.
‘But who knows, if we’d had McQueen, if it would have been different’ ibid.
‘When I tried to sell the movie’ ibid.
‘I’m gonna say something stupid’ ibid.
‘just to let themselves go and swim into it’ ibid.
‘I didn’t know Joyce, I didn’t know his wife Nora’ David Norris, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Few writers have had more grace and splendour in the way they write’ ibid.
‘ “Good day’s work, Joyce?” said Budgen’ ibid.
‘Every kind of Dublin saying, like “the sock whiskey” for sore legs, for instance, is in it’ ibid.
‘Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish’ James Joyce, Ulysses, Penguin Classics, new edition, 2000
‘My soul frets in the shadow of his language’ James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Wordsworth Editions Ltd, new edition, May 1992
‘I have no language now, Sheila’ David Norris, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘We tend to be a bit subversive’ ibid.
‘I would say the greatness of Yeats’ Declan Kiberd, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘And for me that’s the magnificence of Yeats’ ibid.
‘We wouldn’t be here today in a Senate of an independent Ireland’ ibid.
‘I have met them at close of day’ W.B. Yeats, Easter, 1916 – WB Yeats Selected Poems, Penguin Classics, reissued 2000
‘Sure, but you have to tell us a story in return’ Declan Kiberd, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘You make your destitution sumptuous’ ibid.
‘In the last ditch, all we can do is sing’ Samuel Becket as quoted by Barry McGovern, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Absolutely terrifying … Apart from it being so famous’ Simon Russell Beale, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘I get the sense that it was a radical exploration of a single human soul’ ibid.
‘It really does yield extraordinary riches’ ibid.
‘Utterly terrifying, poleaxing with fear’ David Tennant, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘I saw him at that very formative age’ ibid.
‘like keeping goal for Scotland’ ibid.
‘And you think, please Lord, let me just remember the lines’ ibid.
‘I can be bounded in a nutshell’ William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2:2, 254–6, Penguin Classics, new edition, January 2007
‘You just get the sense that he hasn’t slept for days’ David Tennant, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘honey-heavy dew of slumber’ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 1:1, 230, Wordsworth Editions, 1992
‘sore labour’s bath’ William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 2:2, 35–6, Penguin Classics, new edition, 2007
‘Alas poor Yorick, I knew him’ William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 5:1, 185, Penguin Classics, new edition, 2007
‘I think the Yorick moment is much more specific’ David Tennant, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘The first few performances holding a real human head’ ibid.
‘like it was some big oak tree’ Mark Rylance, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘ “It’s you who are alive now.” ’ ibid.
‘In Pittsburgh there was a little old lady’ ibid.
‘Till then, sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise’ William Shakespeare, Hamlet 1:2, 256–7, Penguin Classics, new edition, January 2007
‘I remember performing the play out at Broadmoor special hospital’ Mark Rylance, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘To be, or not to be, that is the question’ William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:1, 56–88 Penguin Classics, new edition, January 2007
‘I think poetry is to be distinguished always from prose.’ Christopher Ricks and Stephen Fry, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone’ W. H. Auden, ‘Funeral Blues’,Collected Poems, Faber & Faber, Copyright © 1976, 1991, 2007 The Estate of W. H. Auden
‘Tragically in my life, in every film I’ve ever done’ Richard Curtis, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Every day I think of that line from “The Boxer’ ibid.
‘If you pick up a poem for the first time you have to piece it together’ ibid.
‘I think there was a six-month period in which I understood it’ ibid.
‘music is auditory cheesecake’ Professor Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Penguin Allen Lane, 1998
‘A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play’ Mars, D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, 1965
‘Now hands that do dishes …with mild green Fairy Liquid’ Fairy Liquid advertising campaign, 1961
‘Just do it’ Nike, Wieden and Kennedy, 1988
‘Most excellent and proved Dentifrice’ London Gazette, 1660, quoted by Gillian Dyer, Advertising as Communication, Routledge, new edition, 1982
‘Promise, large Promise, is the soul of an Advertisement’ Dr Samuel Johnson, The Idler, The Universals Chronicle, 1759 edition
‘It won’t be long till Leo Burnett is selling apples’ quoted in The Apple Story, leoburnett.co.in
‘They’re GR-R-R-E-A-T’ Kellogg’s Frosties advertising campaign, Leo Burnett, 1952
‘Words are tremendously important in advertising’ Don Bowen, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘We pluck the lemon; you get the plums’ Volkswagen advertising campaign, Doyle Dane Bernbach, 1960
‘We’re only Number 2. We try harder’ Avis advertising campaign, Doyle Dane Bernbach, 1962
‘Probably the best lager in the world’ Carlsberg advertising campaign, Saatchi & Saatchi, 1973
‘Refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach’ Heineken advertising campaign, Collett Dickenson Pearce & Partners, 1974
‘Don’t just book it, Thomas Cook it’ Thomas Cook advertising campaign, Wells, Rich, Greene, 1984
‘English is a particularly good language for being able to play gags’ Don Bowen, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Don’t forget the Fruit Gums, Mum’ Rowntree’s Fruit Gums advertising campaign, 1958
‘Beanz Means Heinz’ Heinz advertising campaign, Young & Rubicam, 1967
‘All because the lady loves Milk Tray’ Cadbury’s advertising campaign, Leo Burnett, 1968
‘Opal Fruits! Made to make your mouth water’ Mars advertising campaign, c.1970
‘For Mash get Smash!’ Smash advertising campaign, Boase Massimi Pollitt, 1974
‘Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet’ Hamlet advertising campaign, Collett Dickenson Pearce & Partners, 1960
‘The end line has got to resonate with people’ Don Bowen, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Now the laborers and cablers and council-motion tablers were just passing by’ McDonald’s, Leo Burnett, 2009
‘I think there will always be good stories to tell’ Don Bowen, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Unless your advertising contains a big idea it will pass like a ship in the night’ David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, Prion Books, 1995
‘In Great Britain, there are twelve million households’ David Ogilvy, The Theory and Practice of Selling the Aga Cooker, issued by Aga Heat Limited, June 1935
‘no credentials, no clients and only $6,000 in the bank’ David Ogilvy, An Autobiography, John Wiley & Sons; Revised Ed edition, February 1997
‘Did it make me gasp when I first saw it?’ David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, Prion Books, 1995
‘The Man in the Hathaway shirt’ C. F. Hathaway, Ogilvy and Mather, 1951
‘At sixty miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock’ Rolls Royce advertising campaign, Ogilvy & Mather, 1958
‘Only Dove is one-quarter cleansing cream’ Dove advertising campaign, Ogilvy & Mather,
‘The consumer is not a moron’ David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, Prion Books, 1995
‘Being edited by Ogilvy was like being operated on by a great surgeon’ Kenneth Roman, The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009
‘I do not regard advertising as entertainment or art form’ David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, Prion Books, 1995
‘David Ogilvy 1911 – Great brands live for ever’ Leo Burnett, 1999
‘A lot of communication has nothing to do with the words’ President Clinton, The Art of Oratory, BBC News, April 2009
‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!’ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 3:2, 73, Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1992
‘To be or not to be’ Hamlet, 3:1, 56, Penguin Classics, 2007
‘Out, damn spot’ William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5:1, 35, Penguin Classics, 2007
‘Brutus is an honourable man’ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 3:2, 87, Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1992
‘Words paint pictures; words draw our imagination’ The Reverend Jesse Jackson as quoted in The Art of Oratory, BBC News, April 2009
‘It is this fate, I solemnly assure you, that I dread for you’ Demosthenes, translated by Arthur Wallace Pickard in The Public Orations of Demosthenes, Volume I, The Echo Library, January 2008
‘Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this’ Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address, Penguin, August 2009
‘I am tired of fighting. Our Chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead’ Kent Nerburn, Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy, HarperOne, 2006
‘We shall not flag or fail’ Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, 4 June 1940, as quoted in David Cannadine (ed.), Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Great Speeches, Penguin Classics, 2007
‘He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle’ Edward R. Murrow, CBS broadcast, 30 November 1954, quoted in David Cannadine (ed.), Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Great Speeches, Penguin Classics, 2007
‘that branch of the art of lying which consists in very nearly deceiving your friends without quite deceiving your enemies’ Francis Cornford, quoted by Michael Balfour in Propaganda in War, 1939–45: Organizations, Policies and Publics in Britain and Germany, Routledge, 1979
‘You know what “morale” is, don’t you?’ Graham Greene, John Dighton, Angus MacPhail, Diana Morgan, Went the Day Well?, Ealing Studios, 1942
‘It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words’ George Orwell, 1984, Penguin, 2008
‘In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible’ ibid.
‘partly to improve his French’; ‘and it was an ideology, not just a language’ Bernard Crick, George Orwell: A Life, Penguin, 2nd revised edition, 1992
‘Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past’ George Orwell, 1984, Penguin, 2008
‘That propaganda is good which leads to success’ Joseph Goebbels, quoted by Joachim C. Fest, The Face of the Third Reich, Penguin, new edition, 1995
‘Letting a hundred flowers blossom’ Roderick MacFarquhar, The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals, Praeger, 1960
‘War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength’ George Orwell, 1984, Penguin, 2008
‘Political slogans are still useful because they sum up the approach’ Don Bowen, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘The most brilliant propagandist technique’ Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, Jaico Publishing House, 37th edition, 2007