A great delight

Gowers is fierce, funny and staggeringly well informed

Stuffed with entertaining detail ... Horrible Words is lively, provocative, witty and enlightening

Exuberant and stimulating ... erudite, informative and fun

A very useful book, packed with good historical sense

A joy - informative and irreverent

Witty and erudite ... A splendid antidote to small-minded pedantry

Will have you enraptured by etymology ... Hugely enjoyable

It is Benjamin Dreyer's intense love for the English language and his passion for the subject that make the experience of reading Dreyer's English such a pleasure, almost regardless of the invaluable and practical purpose his book serves in such dark and confusing times for grammar and meaning.

Benjamin Dreyer's brilliant, pithy, incandescently intelligent book is to contemporary writing what Geoffrey Chaucer's poetry was to medieval English: a gift that broadens and deepens the art and the science of literature by illustrating that convention should not stand in the way of creativity, so long as that creativity is expressed with clarity and with conviction.

Dreyer can help you . . . with tips on punctuation and spelling. . . . Even better: He’ll entertain you while he’s at it.

This work is that rare writing handbook that writers might actually want to read straight through, rather than simply consult.

Destined to become a classic.

A fascinating guide to grammatical ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ - practical and useful

If learning about the pillars of punctuation and grammar doesn’t excite you, let Benjamin Dreyer change your mind. As the copy chief of Random House, Dreyer has invaluable insider knowledge on how to become a better writer, and he shares his enthusiasm about everything from how to use split infinitives to the value of the semicolon. Here, he analyzes the English language without dipping into the drab technicalities, crafting a pleasing read for anyone who has an appreciation for the written word.

Dreyer promises to reveal “some of the fancy little tricks I’ve come across or devised that can make even skilled writing better”, and does so with accuracy, style, and humour […] you can’t help warming to a writer who has – perhaps through a process of déformation professionnelle if nothing else – become this attuned to nuances of meaning, and even spelling.

Boisterously well written ... I recommend it highly.

Pleasurable and instructive […] You can read Dreyer’s English right through with unalloyed enjoyment, and learn a lot from it: not only from its rulings but from its attitude. Sane, tetchy, prankish and intensely pragmatic. Benjamin Dreyer is wise and bitterly experienced and fantastically good company. You should buy his book and read it.

Useful and interesting

An incredibly poignant and layered collection that masterfully graduates from the past, roots us in the present and speaks to the ages all at once. Manorism is a striking, visceral voyage between cultures, languages and histories in ode to the precious lives of Black boys and men

I think one day, Yomi Sode's Manorism will be required reading for a generation of young Black men. [This book is h]is widescreen and expansive examination of what it's like to navigate the complexities of British society as a Black man. From the moments of triumph to those of bleak loss, Sode brings poetic brilliance to the collection's entire range of subject matter

A breathtaking and tender exploration of Black boyhood, manhood, fatherhood and grief

A work of formal experimentation, where lyric essays nestle against play-let structures, in service of a Claudia Rankine-esque determination to bear witness and find frameworks with which we can look at the world properly, fully ... Brilliant ... It's like fireworks going off ... Sode is unflinching and fearless ... Manorism's real gift to us as readers is, ultimately, Sode's deep and unfailing humanity. This is a book in which love can be found

Yomi Sode's Manorism has both its feet planted firmly on the ground - but as a collection, it spends much of its existence split between various opposing worlds of imagination: Black and white, past and present, peaceful and chaotic . . . It forces readers to question what violence we consider beautiful, which victims worthy of framing and hanging on a white wall? . . . Manorism cuts to the quick, openly daring readers to look at the blood spilled within its pages . . . [It] gleams like a whittled blade