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