The Ize Have It

She divided us in life, she’s dividing us in death. Baroness Thatcher was so controversial that a single letter in a single word in the subtitle of a book that someone else has written about her and is being published after her funeral can get people’s backs up. Charles Moore’s biography is, according to its cover, ‘authorized’. Iain Dale isn’t happy (and I’m sure he’s not alone). ‘I am appalled,’ he writes on his blog, ‘that they have used the American spelling … It’s certainly not what she would have wanted and it grates. Penguin ought to remember its British roots.’

Good news, Iain – it turns out ‘-ize’ isn’t American after all. It’s as British as Yorkshire pudding and socks with sandals. Or rather it’s English, dating as it does from the time before Britain even existed. The first recorded example of ‘organize’, for instance, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was in 1425.