Did Simon Heffer’s new book come out on St George’s Day? If not, it probably should have done. If we ever needed someone to defend what’s left of our national culture from the massed armies of lefties, foreigners, proles, riff-raff, illiterates, young people, thin people and David Cameron, he would be our man. For three decades he has fought the good fight, a squat colossus of unquenchable fury, his red hair forever threatening to burst into flames, just because it can. He is one of the marvels of the age and, I now discover to my shock, exactly four days younger then me. We Cancerians have to stick together — although my moon is in Aries and his is in Taurus, which I’m told makes all the difference.
Recently, then, young Simon has turned the white heat of his attention to the English language. Strictly English (2010) started life as a series of emails sent to Telegraph staffers who kept writing ‘emend’ when they meant ‘amend’ and foozling their subjunctives. Professional writers liked the book, whether or not they liked Heffer. Academics were less keen. The professor of general linguistics at Edinburgh university saw ‘this perversely atavistic book’ as a ‘perversion of grammatical education’.
Still, it sold well, mainly to people who knew all the rules already, but liked reading them again for old times’ sake. Simply English isn’t so much a follow-up as a variation on the previous book. Expanded and rewritten, it has been rearranged into a handy A-to-Z format, enabling you to look up solecisms and barbarisms with the greatest of ease. It could be the pedant’s loo book of 2014. (Heffer says that ‘loo’ is mere slang. I suspect he would prefer ‘lavatory’, or even the briskly utilitarian ‘water closet’.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in