This title ties in with a four-part ITV series. Melvyn Bragg's novel "The Hired Man" won the Time/Life Silver Pen Award. "Without a City Wall" was the winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. "The Soldier's Return" was published in 1999 and won the WHSmith Literary Award.
Melvyn Bragg has written several works of non-fiction (as well as his bestselling novels) including Speak for England, an oral history of the twentieth century, Rich, a biography of Richard Burton and On Giants' Shoulders, a history of science based on his BBC radio series. He was born in 1939 and educated at Wigton's Nelson Tomlinson Shool and at Oxford where he read history. He is controller of Arts at LWT and President of the National Campaign for the Arts, and in 1998 he was made a life peer. He lives in London and Cumbria.
Melvyn Bragg's superb new history of the English language is told as an adventure story, and rightly so. There is much splendid intellectual firepower in this book, as one might have expected from watching the ITV series on which it was based, and the story is not all one of imperialistic advance. - Andrew Roberts, SpectatorBeautifully clear and, indeed, thrilling - Waterstone's Books QuarterlyOn American English as it evolved Bragg is excellent. He has a novelist's eye for the illuminating vignette...it is always readable, often thought-provoking, and consistently entertaining. The colour illustrations are a particularly striking feature of the book. - IndependentBragg's approachable account...gleams with little gems. His enthusiasm is appealing...he digs beneath modernity and examines our bedrock with a sympathetic eye. It has power and clarity...this adventure is rewarding. - Sunday HeraldBragg's excellent radio programmes on the subject ...are the basis of this history of English over the past 1,500 years. Bragg is an expert translator in areas that academics find difficult to popularise...encapsulationg academic knowledge of Old and Middle English he produces a pithy, accessible narrative. - GuardianThis is a highly readable, jargon-free treatise on a notoriously prickly subject. Bragg's affection for his subject is infectious. In this he successfully j
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