Balderdash & Piffle: One Sandwich Short of a Dog's Dinner is a thrilling ride through the provocative, bewildering and often downright bizarre world of language and etymology. From the brash jargon of celebrity magazines to the delicacies and feints of the euphemism, author and word-sleuth Alex Games has uncovered the remarkable stories that lie behind some of our best-loved words and expressions. By grouping words into distinct themes - such as put downs and insults, the vocab of fashionistas and the lingo of dodgy dealings - Balderdash & Piffle looks at the English language in a fresh and revealing light. Who was the original Jack the Lad? What is the tragic story behind the expression Sweet F.A.? Balderdash & Piffle will show you where thugs come from, why 'barmy' once had more to do with your beer than your brain, and how a little bit of 'hanky-panky' could literally work magic. From the 'Cloud-cuckoo-land' of Aristophanes to the town of Balaclava, this is a funny but rigorously researched account of English words and their origins. Drawing together sources as diverse as William Shakespeare, David Cameron and the Burnham-on-Sea Gazette, Alex Games recalls the trends, innovations and scandals that have produced some of our most familiar but least explored words and phrases. Accompanying a brand new series of the hit BBC television programme Balderdash & Piffle - and containing all the results of the 'Wordhunt' from the first series -this entertaining book is a treasure trove for English-language lovers everywhere.

‘The nerdiest and longest-running quiz around’ The Spectator Have you got what it takes to tackle Radio 4's most fiendish quiz? Question: A fictional criminal psychologist, a former Conservative minister, and the eponymous protagonist of a Peter Hedges novel, might all serve on the board alongside some big cheeses. Can you explain?* The Round Britain Quiz is the oldest broadcast quiz anywhere in the world. Created in 1947 it has built and maintained a cult following from across the generations. Each series sees six teams from around the UK competing against each other to solve a series of seriously cryptic clues, with a chairman giving a steer on how to get to the answer. Compiled by long-serving series producer, Paul Bajoria, and with an introduction from the Chairman, BBC journalist Tom Sutcliffe, The Round Britain Quiz Book features 250 of the toughest and most challenging questions from the last 70 years as well as many new and exclusive conundrums, drawing on unpredictable fields of knowledge, to truly test the nation. *Answer: They might all be found on a cheeseboard, as accompaniments to the cheese. The psychologist referred to is ‘Fitz’ in the TV series Cracker, the former MP is Eric Pickles, and Gilbert Grape is Peter Hedges’ creation.

Permission to speak, Sah! In the aftermath of the Second World War, over two million men were conscripted to serve in Britain's armed services. Some were sent abroad and watched their friends die in combat. Others remained in barracks and painted coal white. But despite delivering such varied experiences, National Service helped to shape the outlook of an entire generation of young British males. Historian Dr Colin Shindler has interviewed a wide range of ex-conscripts, from all backgrounds, across all ranks, and spanning the entire fourteen years that peacetime conscription lasted, and captured their memories in this engrossing book. From them, we experience the tension of a postwar Berlin surrounded by Russians, the exotic heat and colour of Tripoli in 1948, the brief but intense flashpoint of the Suez Crisis, and the fear of the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. But we also hear about the other end of the scale, the conscripts who didn't make it outside the confines of their barracks, or in one case, beyond his home town. Through these conversations we learn as much about the changing attitudes of servicemen as war became more of a distant memory as we do about the varied nature of their experiences. We see, too, the changing face of British society across these pivotal years, which span everything from the coronation of Elizabeth II, to the birth of rock 'n' roll, to the beginning of the end of the Empire. The stories within these pages are fascinating. And they deserve to be told before they are lost forever.

This is a story of teenage dreams, which, as any Peel fan knows, are hard to beat. Between 1967 and 2004 John Peel picked over 2000 bands to come and record over 4000 sessions to be played on his radio show. Many were young and had never been in a recording studio before, for some it was the start of an illustrious career, for others it was the only recognition their musical talent ever got. For over 35 years the cream of British musical talent made the journey to the BBC's studio in Maida Vale, from Pink Floyd to Pulp, the Small Faces to the Smiths. And because John Peel was so respected his sessions took on a legendary status - they were a rite of passage that every new band wanted to go through. Unfettered by commerical pressure the Peel Sessions were a unique British institution - an archive of music that reflects one man's passion for finding and encouraging new music. Includes a full sessionography listing songs, band members and broadcast dates. Jarvis Cocker writing about his first Peel Session aged 18 (Wayne the drummer was 15): 'We travelled down to Maida Vale in a van driven by a very strange man we'd contacted via a card pinned to the Virgin record shop noticeboard. We'd had to borrow lots of equipment from a band called The Naughtiest Girl Was a Monitor 'cause we didn't have enough stuff of our own. The session was to be produced by Dale Griffin, who used to be the drummer in Mott the Hoople; I seem to remember that he was wearing cowboy boots. I think the crisis point came when Wayne was attempting to get a home-made synth-drum to work that a friend of his at school had made out of a rubber burglar-alarm mat and an old electronic calculator - Dale Griffin looked at this 15-year-old kid crouching on the floor bashing what looked like a doormat with some wires coming out of it and just put his head in his hands. But to his credit, the session did get finished and after it, everything else started for me...'

Originally published in 1985, fourteen foremost writers of fiction give detailed accounts of their writings in this absorbing collection by John Haffenden, whom The Sunday Times has applauded for having ‘perfected’ the art of the literary interview. Bringing together discussions with a wide range of authors in Britain at the time, the volume contains interviews with Martin Amis, Malcolm Bradbury, Anita Brookner, Angela Carter, William Golding, Russell Hoban, David Lodge, Ian McEwan, Iris Murdoch, V.S. Pritchett, Salman Rushdie, David Storey, Emma Tennant and Fay Weldon. John Haffenden questions them about the creative process, about specific works – including Golding’s Rites of Passage, Hoban’s Riddley Walker, Murdoch’s The Philosopher’s Pupil and Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children and Shame – and about the ideas and visions which inform those works. The writers provide lively, fascinating and often definitive responses which offer many insights into the value and function of fiction. The volume also includes discussions of cultural context and of narrative techniques and kinds – realist, postmodernist, fabulous – offering immediate material for critical debate. For all who are interested in twentieth century fiction it is essential reading.

David Lodge is a much-loved novelist and influential literary critic. Examining his career from his earliest publications in the late 1950s to his more recent works, David Lodge and the Tradition of the Modern Novel identifies Lodge's central place within the canon of twentieth-century British literature. J. Russell Perkin argues that liberalism is the defining feature of Lodge's identity as a novelist, critic, and Roman Catholic intellectual, and demonstrates that Graham Greene, James Joyce, Kingsley Amis, Henry James, and H.G. Wells are the key influences on Lodge's fiction. Perkin also considers Lodge's relationship to contemporary British novelists, including Hilary Mantel, Julian Barnes, and Monica Ali. In a study that is both theoretically informed and accessible to the general reader, Perkin shows that Lodge's work is shaped by the dialectic of modernism and the realist tradition. Through an approach that draws on diverse theories of literary influence and history, David Lodge and the Tradition of the Modern Novel provides the most thorough treatment of the novelist's career to date.