The Language Wars

[Hitchings] writes beautiful prose, witty and succinct. His book is full of complex ideas expressed with crystal clarity ... The range of his knowledge and curiosity is remarkable ... Every paragraph contains a fascinating detail about the English language ... I recommend that you rush out to immediately buy it, or to buy it immediately, whichever you prefer. - Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday, Five Star Review

This richly detailed and often delightfully combative book is a historical guide to the sometimes splenetic battles that have been fought over [English] down the centuries . . . a pleasure to read. - Andrew Holgate, Sunday Times

Crisply written, amusing, informative and thought-provoking. Anyone interested in the English language and its history should read it. - Charles Moore, Sunday Telegraph

Hitchings' exemplary researches and disinterested, perceptive and often witty explications, make it clear that one cannot glibly dismiss these struggles over what makes English "proper" ... Hitchings has created a fascinating, wholly readable and gratifyingly informative book. - Financial Times

The Language Wars asks us to think beyond tradition, habit and deference, and to consider what we want from our words. It is a very intelligent and polite call to arms, but a call to arms nonetheless - Observer

The Language Wars takes the reader on a Cook's tour of complaints about English past and present ... - Deborah Cameron, Guardian

It is a breath of fresh air (if that is the right clich?) to wander the byways of language without always being nudged to laugh at prescriptivists' foolish nostrums. - Daily Telegraph

A superb survey - Reader's Digest