The English language has evolved throughout its history, and usually for good reasons. However, in recent years, egged on by social media and the ubiquity and velocity of the internet, it has been subject to some grave assaults. There appear no longer to be any rules, in an era when, thanks to the web (another word to have changed its meaning) everyone can be a published author, completely unedited and unregulated. This often has dire consequences for the English tongue.Simon Heffe...

**‘An epic new history . . . a work of epic scholarship, breathtaking range, and piercing originality’ Daily Express‘An astonishing achievement of narrative history . . . I think the word is "magisterial".’ Spectator**‘Excellent, thorough, detailed and combatively argued.’ Sunday Times***______________________________________Sing As We Go* is an astonishingly ambitious overview of the political, social and cultural...

An ambitious exploration of the making of the Victorian Age—and the Victorian mind—by a master historian.Britain in the 1840s was a country wracked by poverty, unrest, and uncertainty; there were attempts to assassinate the queen and her prime minister; and the ruling class lived in fear of riot and revolution. By the 1880s it was a confident nation of progress and prosperity, transformed not just by industrialization but by new attitudes to politics, education, wo...

A richly detailed history of Britain at its imperial zenith, revealing the simmering tensions and explosive rivalries beneath the opulent surface of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras.The popular memory of Britain in the years before the Great War is of a powerful, contented, orderly, and thriving country. Britain commanded a vast empire: she bestrode international commerce. Her citizens were living longer, profiting from civil liberties their grandparents only ...

"Be in no doubt: the beer was drunk but the man drank the beer.""We must avoid vulgarities like 'front up'. If someone is 'fronting up' a television show, then he is presenting it."Simon Heffer's incisive and amusingly despairing emails to colleagues at the The Daily Telegraph about grammatical mistakes and stylistic slips have attracted a growing band of ardent fans over recent years. Now, in his new book Strictly English, he makes an impassioned...

In his best-selling Strictly English Simon Heffer explained how to write and speak our language well. In Simply English he offers an entertaining and supremely useful A–Z guide to frequent errors, common misunderstandings and stylistic howlers. What is the difference between amend and emend, between imply and infer, and between uninterested and disinterested? When should one put owing to rather than due to...

Should England be independent from Scotland?May 1999. The Scots have their first opportunity in 300 years to elect their own parliament. In 2014 that referendum will finally take place.To many in England, the continuing rise of Scottish nationalism causes unease. Scotland could well choose to leave the United Kingdom. In this provocative polemic, Simon Heffer argues that England must let Scotland go. The lessons of trying to coerce Ireland should have been learnt: there is ...

'There is an old saying, 'Murder will out.' I am really unable to see why this should be so...'Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal (1907) inspired the classic Ealing film Kind Hearts and Coronets. But though both works are comedies about a serial murderer, they are different creatures. The eponymous narrator of Roy Horniman's novel, son of a Jewish commercial traveller, offers his memoirs from the condemned cell , having murdered six people who s...

The Telegraph newspapers maintain their high standards of accuracy, literacy and grammar thanks to a comprehensive style book used by all their journalists, covering everything from the correct title of a baron to the spelling of Gorden Kaye’s Christian name when writing about Allo, Allo. But its rigour and exactitude are complemented by a deliciously baleful, even testy, wit – a quality much valued by, and indeed demonstrated by, its own readership in Aurum’s hugely successful Unpublished...

As much as any country, England bore the brunt of Germany's aggression in World War II, and was ravaged in many ways at the war's end. Celebrated historian David Kynaston has written an utterly original, and compellingly readable, account of the following six years, during which the country rebuilt itself. Kynaston's great genius is to chronicle the country's experience from bottom to top: coursing through through the book, therefore, is an astonishing variety of ordinary, contemporary voi...

Private investigator Cormoran Strike must track down a missing writer -- and a sinister killer bent on destruction -- in this "wonderfully entertaining" mystery (Harlan Coben, New York Times Book Review) that inspired the acclaimed HBO Max series C.B. Strike.When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, Mrs. Quine just thinks her husband has gone off by himself for a few days -- as he has don...

In the century before the great famine of the late 1840s, the Irish people, and the poor especially, became increasingly dependent on the potato for their food. So when potato blight struck, causing the tubers to rot in the ground, they suffered a grievous loss. Thus began a catastrophe in which approximately one million people lost their lives and many more left Ireland for North America, changing the country forever. During and after this terrible human crisis, the Briti...