Here is one example of his story-telling, from a multitude. He mentions Tolkien’s use of the suffix -ril, from Old Norse (I think), meaning ‘brilliance’, which leads him to notice an old advertisement for Bovril. (If you like this making of connections, as I do, you will enjoy this book.) ‘Napoleon III wanted an effective way to feed his soldiers during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. He ordered a million tons of beef from Britain.’ Since there wasn’t enough beef, an Edinburgh butcher called John Lawson-Johnson made an extract, ‘Johnson’s Fluid Beef’, or so he called it until he read Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s popular novel The Coming Race. This is the story of a society without strife, ‘thanks to a mystical source of energy which they call vril … Johnson took the Latin word for “ox” (bos), chopped off the last consonant and added some vril. The rest’, (Crystal remarks happily), ‘is history.’

J. M. Coetzee is quoted on the cover, praising an earlier Crystal book, The Story of English: ‘the best introductory history of the English language family that we have.’ I shall seek it out.

Blackwell Bookshop

Purchase your copy here, 10% off RRP