Book description
English is the collective work of millions of people throughout the
ages. It is democratic, ever-changing and ingenious in its assimilation
of other cultures. English runs through the heart of world finance,
medicine and the Internet, and it is understood by around two thousand
million people across the world. Yet it was very nearly wiped out in its
early years.
In this book Melvyn Bragg shows us the remarkable story of the English
language; from its beginnings as a minor guttural Germanic dialect to
its position today as a truly established global language. THE ADVENTURE
OF ENGLISH is not only an enthralling story of power, religion and
trade, but also the story of people, and how their day-to-day lives
shaped and continue to change the extraordinary language that is
English. Melvyn Bragg's first novel, FOR WANT OF A NAIL, was published
in 1965 and since then his novels have included THE HIRED MAN, for which
he won the Time/Life Silver Pen Award, WITHOUT A CITY WALL, winner of
the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, CREDO, THE MAID OF BUTTERMERE and THE
SOLDIER'S RETURN, which was published to huge critical acclaim in 1999
and won the WHSmith Literary Award. He has also written several works of
non-fiction including SPEAK FOR ENGLAND, an oral history of the
twentieth century, RICH, a biography of Richard Burton, ON GIANTS'
SHOULDERS, a history of science based on his BBC radio series, THE
ADVENTURE OF ENGLISH, 12 BOOKS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD, IN OUR TIME and
THE SOUTH BANK SHOW: FINAL CUT. He was born in 1939 and educated at
Wigton's Nelson Thomlinson School and at Oxford where he read history.
He is President of the National Campaign for the Arts, and in 1998 he
was made a life peer. He won an Academy Fellowship at the BAFTA
Television Awards in 2010.
