When was it good to be a bully? Who was the clown that almost wrecked Cleopatra's suicide scene in William Shakespeare's play? What have singing goats got to do with tragedy? And what connects goats, hedgehogs and supermodels with the word capricious? Were Cossack cavalrymen the first to eat in a bistro, and were twittering birds the first to use jargon? Above all, what on earth can King Henry VIII and Paddington Bear have in common?
The answers to these questions can be found in My Word!. Author, Peter Sargent, writer of historical books on East Anglia and former journalist, has long been intrigued and frequently bamboozled by the language we use in everyday speech.
In this book, he looks at nearly 100 common words that we bandy about with bandon, rarely thinking about where they came from , and how their use has changed and is continuing to change. It's an entertaining and an informative safari through the jungle of our evolving language.
Peter Sargent
Peter Sargent is a recovering ex- journalist, turned historian and author. His interest in the world of words was sparked when he studied History and English Literature at trhe University of East Anglia, Norwich in the 1980s.
After working in March, Peterborough and Cambridge, via spells in Malta and Hong Kong, he later returned to Norfolk towards the end of the 1990s to work as a journalist on newspapers and magazines. From 2004-11, he wrote weekly articles on local history, which appeared in the Eastern Daily Press newspaper, and was production editor on Let's Talkj magazione for six years, before becoming a full-time writer in 2016.
Originally from Spalding in the Lincolnshire Fens, he lives in Norwich. This is his fourth published book, following A Moment in Time (2017), A Place in History (2018) and Anglian Annals (2019).
My Word!, price £10, is published by Paul Dickson Books on Thursday 1 October 2020. Order your copy here.
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