Media commentators have noted a rising public tolerance to the use of rude or offensive words in modern English. John Lydon’s obscene outburst on 'I’m a Celebrity...' only provoked a handful of complaints – a muted reaction compared to the furore following his use of the f-word on television twenty-eight years earlier. This timely and authoritative exploration of rudeness in modern English draws together experts from the academic world and the media – journalists, linguists, lexicographers and literary critics – and argues that rudeness is an important cultural phenomenon. Tightly edited with clear accessibly written pieces, the essays look at rudeness in: the media literature football chants street culture seaside postcards. With contributions from media figures including Tom Paulin and leading media-friendly linguists Deborah Cameron and Lynda Mugglestone, Rude Britannia raises concerns about linguistic and social codes, standards of decency, what is considered taboo in the public realm, constructions of bawdy, class, race, power and British identity.

Tim Fountain knows more about sex than most people. His show, Sex Addict, was the target of widespread and vociferous critical media attention and led him to be labeled a pervert and a freak by much of the mainstream press. This, understandably, raised a few questions in his mind. Was his sex life really so different to the rest of Britain? Or was he just being rather more vocal about what he was up to? To find out, Tim has traveled around the UK, starting in Bradford at the site of his first 14-year-old fumble, to take the sexual temperature of our age. Visiting doll-fetishists and animal-fanciers, dogging fans and spanking enthusiasts, swingers' hotels and glory holes, Tim investigates our current attitudes on sex, peeping behind closed doors and exploring the private lives of Britons in an attempt to discover just what is going on beneath their stiff upper lips.

Catalog of the exhibition held at Tate Britain, June 9-Sept. 5, 2010.

This lively, accessible account of works by Edward Bulwer, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontk, George Eliot, Robert Browning, and Joseph Conrad explains why many Victorians nursed a hostile vision of man and society, and how in their hands misanthropy -- once a means of conveying integrity and justified disdain of society's excesses -- turned immoral and quasi-criminal. Delivering a surprising new perspective on the past, "Hatred and Civility" shows that the fanatics and terrorists troubling us today have many precursors in our supposedly moral ancestors.

Owen Wister (1860-1938) was an American writer whose stories helped to establish the cowboy as an archetypical hero. Wister helped to create the basic Western myths and themes, which were later popularized by radio, television, and movies. His most famous work is the 1902 "The Virginian."