ISBN: 9780670918874

RRP: $32.95

Publisher: Penguin

If you were to read the title, jacket blurb or publicity material for Robert McCrum’s new book you could be excused for assuming that it dealt largely with a modern phenomenon. ‘Globish’ or Global English is, after all, a relatively modish expression. You may be surprised, then, that McCrum starts his enjoyable Globish story more than two thousand years ago in the tar pits of Denmark.

It takes McCrum roughly 200 pages of the 268-page book to reach the postcolonial ‘Globish’ speaking world of the recent past. The bulk of this material – the history of the English language – has been well covered elsewhere, including a number of times by McCrum himself. Nonetheless, Globish offers a lively, entertaining account at a brisk pace and on this basis alone is a worthy addition to the fold. McCrum offers all the usual elements, from the Norman Conquest to the Gettysburg Address, with humour and a journalistic gift for anecdote. But it was always through the prism of ‘Globish’ that this book was going to offer something different. Read more