Andrew Billen

The Reason Why Counts Became Earls

Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanity in English

By Geoffrey Hughes

Jonathan Meades

Words Fail Me

It’s Been Said Before: A Guide to the Use and Abuse of Clichés

By Orin Hargraves

Bernard Sharratt

Class in the Novel

Attitude to Class in the English Novel: From Walter Scott to David Storey

By Mary Eagleton and David Pierce

Kingsley Amis

Snobs & Stuffed Shirts

Sayings of the Century

By Nigel Rees

Wordly Wise

By James McDonald

The State of the Language: English Observed

By Philip Howard

John Sutherland

My Own Private Idiolect

The Language Wars: A History of Proper English

By Henry Hitchings

The Last Lingua Franca: English Until the Return of Babel

By Nicholas Ostler

David Profumo

Lost in Translation

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This: A History and Philosophy of Jokes

By Jim Holt

Diarmaid Ó Muirithe

Towers of Babel

Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World

By Nicholas Ostler

John Sutherland

Nomenculture

Literary Names: Personal Names in English Literature

By Alastair Fowler