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Books

The book that brought out the Lady Bracknell in me

A review of Language!: 500 Years of the Vulgar Tongue, by Jonathon Green. Julie Burchill thinks you can have too much of a bad thing

3 May 2014

9:00 AM

3 May 2014

9:00 AM

Language!: 500 Years of the Vulgar Tongue Jonathon Green

Atlantic, pp.432, £25, ISBN: 9781848878983

I’ve always said that speech is my second language, so naturally I’m somewhat slang-shy; I love words all written down properly and punctuated to within an inch of their lives. Not so Jonathon Green, who has the same relationship with slang as Jordan does with eating wedding cake in a thong; five books about it published and another one in the pipeline.

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