"The Wonder of Whiffling" is a hugely enjoyable, surprising and rewarding tour around the language of the British Isles (with plenty of fine coinages from our English-speaking cousins across the pond, Down Under and elsewhere). Discover all sorts of words you've always wished existed but never knew, such as fornale, to spend one's money before it has been earned; cagg, a solemn vow or resolution not to get drunk for a certain time; and petrichor, the pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell. Delving passionately into the English language, Adam Jacot de Boinod also discovers why it is you wouldn't want to have dinner with a vice admiral of the narrow seas, why Jacobites toasted the little gentleman in black velvet, and why a Nottingham Goodnight is better than one from anywhere else.

Wonder Of Whiffling,The: And Other Sadly Neglected And Suprisingly Useful Words From The

Humor & Entertainment

De, Boinod Adam

Humor

Particular Books

This book is not a dictionary, though it tells you all you need to know about everything from Authenticity to Zips. It's not an autobiography, though it does offer a revealing and highly personal inside view of contemporary culture. It's an essential tool kit for understanding the world around us. Ir's about what makes a Warhol a genuine fake; the creation of national identities; the mania to collect. It's also about the city as seen from the rear view mirror of Grand Theft Auto V; digital ornament and why we value imperfections. It's about drinking a bruisingly dry martini in Adolf Leo's American bar in Vienna, and about Hitchcock's film sets. It's about the modern world of fashion, technology, design and art.

B is for Bauhaus: An A-Z of the Modern World

Deyan Sudjic,Deyan Sudjic

From 'shotclog', a Yorkshire term for a companion only tolerated because he is paying for the drinks, to Albanian having 29 words to describe different kinds of eyebrows, the languages of the world are full of amazing, amusing and illuminating words and expressions that will improve absolutely everybody's quality of life. All they need is this book! This bumper volume gathers all three of Adam Jacot de Boinod's acclaimed books about language - The Wonder of Whiffling, The Meaning of Tingo and Toujours Tingo (their fans include everyone from Stephen Fry to Michael Palin) - into one highly entertaining, keenly priced compendium. As Mariella Frostup said 'You'll never be lost for words again!'

I Never Knew There Was a Word for It

De Boinod, Adam Jacot

The Shell Country Alphabet: The Classic Guide to the British Countryside from Apple Trees

Politics & Social Sciences

GRIGSON, GEOFFREY

Sociology

Did you know that the Cornish pasty was invented to protect tin miners from arsenic poisoning, or that the word 'salary' comes from Roman soldiers being paid their wages in salt?   Why do we eat goose (or turkey) at Christmas? Is the Scotch egg actually from Scotland and what did some retired crusaders have to do with French toast? Who was the original Earl Grey and what sauce was inspired by Parliament? What dish was invented by Greek bandits on the run? Why were hot cross buns seen as magical and what's so rebellious about a haggis or medicinal about a gin and tonic? Did you know what the romantic history is behind the Bakewell Pudding?  Albert Jack tells the strange tales behind our favourite dishes and drinks and where they come from (not to mention their unusual creators). In the colourful, wonderful vein of Schott's Food and Drink Miscellany, Albert Jack's What Caesar Did For My Salad is bursting with fascinating insights, characters and enough stories to entertain a hundred dinner parties.  Albert Jack is the author such bestselling titles as Pop Goes the Weasel, Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep, and The Old Dog and Duck.

What Caesar Did for My Salad

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Jack, Albert

Main Courses & Side Dishes

Thoughtful Gardening: Great Plants Great Gardens Great Gardeners

Thoughtful Gardening is based on Robin Lane Fox's own selection from his widely admired FT column, which he has rewritten and amplified with new chapters to take readers on a highly enjoyable journey through each season of the gardening year. It draws on his lifetime of practical gardening, including his years as Garden Master of New College, Oxford, and contains many memories of fellow gardeners, from Christopher Lloyd to Nancy Lancaster. The book is essential reading for anyone setting out on a new garden or taking stock of one. It takes a critical look at fashions of the moment and is full of advice, ranging from problems with badgers to how to take root-cuttings or choose flowering trees, as well as examples of gardens at home and abroad which Robin Lane Fox has visited over many years. Thoughtful Gardening combines a principled view of the craft of gardening with dozens of new ideas for planting and visiting, and touching reminders of the power of literature and art to deepen what we see and realize in gardens of our own.

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

FOX, Robin Lane

Gardening & Landscape Design

A Natural History of Ghosts

The fascinating true history of ghosts - how we see them and why we believe in them, from Roger Clarke What explains spectral sightings? Why do we fear the supernatural? What proof is there? Growing up in a haunted house, Roger Clarke spent much of his childhood trying to see a ghost. From the terrifying true events behind Henry James's The Turn of the Screw to the frenzy of the Cock Lane poltergeist, he takes us on a journey of belief with ghosts of every kind.

Religion & Spirituality

Clarke, Roger

New Age & Spirituality

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Penguin Modern Classics we are publishing an incredibly desirable and collectable postcard collection of 100 Modern Classics authors. Following the success of Postcards from Penguin this is a must-have box of beautifully produced postcards with memorable, often iconic photographs of writers such as Camus, Steinbeck, Orwell, Waugh, Nabokov. Each postcard is designed to evoke the iconic look of the Modern Classics series.

One Hundred Writers in One Box

VARIOUS

Reference

'So open it anywhere, then anywhere, then anywhere again. We're sure it won't be long before you find a poem that brings you smack into the newness and strangeness of the living present, just as it did us' (from the Introduction)\nIn The Zoo of the New, poets Don Paterson and Nick Laird have cast a fresh eye over more than five centuries of verse, from the English language and beyond. Above all, they have sought poetry that retains, in one way or another, a powerful timelessness: words with the thrilling capacity to make the time and place in which they were written, however distant and however foreign they may be, feel utterly here and now in the 21st Century. 
This book is the condensed result of that search. It stretches as far back as Sappho and as far forward as the recent award-winning work of Denise Riley, taking in poets as varied as Thomas Wyatt, William Shakespeare, T. S. Eliot, Frank O'Hara, Sylvia Plath and Gwendolyn Brooks along the way. Here, the mournful rubs shoulders with the celebratory; the skulduggerous and the foolish with the highfalutin; and tales of love, loss and war with a menagerie of animals and objects, from bee boxes to rubber boots, a suit of armour and a microscope. 
Teeming with old favourites and surprising discoveries, this lovingly selected compendium is sure to win lifelong readers.

The Zoo of the New: A Book of Exceptional Poems from Sappho to Paul Muldoon

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

'Be short, be simple, be human.' When Sir Ernest Gowers first wrote Plain Words, it was intended simply as a guide to the proper use of English for the Civil Service. Within a year, however, its humour, charm and authority had made it a bestseller. Since then it has never been out of print. Six decades on, writer Rebecca Gowers has created a new edition of this now-classic work that both revises and celebrates her great-grandfather's original. Plain Words has been updated to reflect numerous changes in English usage, yet Sir Ernest's distinctive, witty voice is undimmed. And his message remains vital: our writing should be as clear and comprehensible as possible, avoiding superfluous words and clichés - from the jargon of 'commercialese' to the murky euphemisms of politicians. In a new preface, this edition draws on an extensive private archive, previously hidden away in family cupboards and attics, to tell the story behind a book that has become an institution: the essential guide to making yourself understood.

Plain Words

Gowers, Ernest

Gowers, Rebecca

Writing, Research & Publishing Guides

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