Reflects the many changes in English usage. This book draws on an extensive private archive, previously hidden away in family cupboards and attics, to tell the story behind a book that has become an institution.
Sir Ernest Gowers was born in 1880, and became a leading civil servant. He ran the civil defence of London during the Second World War, chaired the Royal Commission into Capital Punishment whose 1953 report contributed significantly to ending the death penalty in Britain, wrote the bestseller, Plain Words, and later became the first editor of H. W. Fowler's classic Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Rebecca Gowers studied English at Oxford and Cambridge. She is the author of The Swamp of Death, shortlisted for the CWA nonfiction Golden Dagger Award, and of two novels, When to Walk and The Twisted Heart, both longlisted for the Orange Prize.
