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Anagrams have been around for thousands of years. Since Adam and Eve first realised that repents is an anagram of serpent people have been fascinated by the little ironies that occur when you play with the order of a word's letters. Pythagoras and Plato were both said to have been big anagram fans. Lo... read more

'An idea is a feat of association, and the height of it is a good metaphor' - Robert Frost. 'It is metaphor above all else that gives clearness, charm and distinction to the style' - Aristotle. Throughout history, great minds have demonstrated a special ability to ingeniously and creatively find a rel... read more

Popular assumptions about gender and communication - famously summed up in the title of the massively influential 1992 bestseller Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus - can have unforeseen but far-reaching consequences in many spheres of life, from attitudes to the phenomenon of 'date-rape' to exp... read more

What can Johnny Cash's lyrics teach us about the little-known Tangut dialect? Is 'tabernacle' really a swear word in Quebecois? Which language has absolutely no verbs? What is Earth's politest insult? And what is biting the wax tadpole actually a translation of? Prepare for a hilarious rollercoaster r... read more

"Righting the Mother Tongue" tells the cockamamie story of English spelling. When did "ghost" acquire its silent 'h'? Will cyberspace kill the one in "rhubarb"? And was it really rocket scientists who invented spell-check? Seeking to untangle the twisted story of English spelling, David Wolman takes u... read more

More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to...In this hymn to the mother tongue Bill Bryson examines how a language 'treated for centuries as the inadequate and second-rate tongue of peasants' has now become the undisputed global language (more peop... read more

Peter Jones takes the reader on a fascinating journey along the highways and byways of Roman life and culture, telling the amazing stories behind the original Latin meanings and uses of hundreds of our everyday words. Taking in every as... read more

Slang permeates Australian society, it can be found in pubs and RSLs, at footy matches and on TV soaps, in the hallowed halls of parliament, in schoolyards, often behind the dunnies and up the backyard round the barbie.

When Thomas Merton entered a Trappist monastery in December 1941, he turned his back on secular life--including a very promising literary career. He sent his journals, a novel-in-progess, and copies of all his poems to his mentor, Columbia professor Mark Van Doren, for safe keeping, fully expecting to... read more

A delightfully discursive, Bill Bryson-esque and personal journey through the groves and the thickets of the English language, by our foremost scholar of the history and structure of the English language.
David Crystal has been described (by the Times Higher Education Supplement) as a sort of 'l... read more

"The Shakespeare Handbook" is the definitive Bard-in-brief. Presenting 50 of the most significant and best-loved scenes from Shakespeare, each extract is preceded by a summary of the play - its plot, characters and themes. The scenes themselves are beautifully and clearly laid out, with key quotes hig... read more