Book description
Englishness is an ancient and powerful concept, but no one seems sure
exactly what it means in the twenty-first century. In exploring our
national identity, Tony Thorne has compiled a fascinating compendium of
the hundred words and phrases that have become the cornerstones of
modern English, and have been used - sometimes deliberately, but often
inadvertently - to stake out our common ground, to define what makes us
essentially English, and thus different from those beastly foreigners
who lurk just off our shores. THE 100 WORDS THAT MAKE THE ENGLISH is
also published with the title JOLLY WICKED, ACTUALLY Tony Thorne is
Language and Innovation consultant and director of the New Language
Archive at King's College, London. He broadcasts regularly on radio,
including for the BBC, and has been a Hollywood script consultant and an
EU adviser on language and communication.
