In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys some of the best funny book titles courtesy of How to Avoid Huge Ships Old Tractors and the Men Who Love Them. How to Avoid Huge Ships. How Green Were the Nazis? Highlights of the History of Concrete. […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys a world tour of the English language courtesy of Paul Anthony Jones’s new book They say you should never judge a book by its cover, but ‘they’, of course are wrong. They’re especially wrong in the case of […]
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle revels in the arcane lexicography of Mrs Byrne’s Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure and Preposterous Words The word deboswellize means ‘to deprecate someone in a biography’. It’s derived from James Boswell, the celebrated biographer of Samuel Johnson. Anaxiphilia means ‘the […]