[A] fascinating account of developing English.

In The Prodigal Tongue, Mark Abley investigates the deep flux in contemporary English... Attuned to pop culture as well as to scholarship...it stylishly covers a large amount of ground, from Lee Kuan Yew to YouTube, via Spike Lee and Ice Cube... Joyous - a paean to the dynamic energies of English.

The Prodigal Tongue takes the reader on an informative and frequently entertaining journey.

[A] witty and well-documented treatise on the ways -- some of them alarming -- in which the English language is changing

As a poet, journalist, editor, intrepid traveller, scholar and endlessly curious spirit, Abley brings an appropriately eclectic perspective to the subject. ... Writing as an inquisitive, bemused Everyman, Abley leads us on a lively intellectual journey through uncharted territory, his comfort in the zone of ambiguity making him the ideal travel guide

Well written . . . provocative

Attuned to pop culture as well as to scholarship, Abley proves a deft social anthropologist

One thing that makes Gowers such an engaging figure is that he isn't prissy, priggish or prim. As far as he is concerned, language is a living thing that is constantly changing - and this is just as it should be

Still the best book on English and how to write it ... Unhappy with versions rewritten by others, Rebecca Gowers, Sir Ernest's great-granddaughter, has produced a new edition ... The result is splendid ... Gowers wrote with wit, humanity and common sense ... [his] central advice should be taped to the screen of anyone sitting down at a computer keyboard

The book has been modernized but preserves all its original charm ... There is arguably a greater need for its circulation among the general public [than ever before]

The zeal with which Sir Ernest uncovers error is matched only by the wit with which he chastises it

I am glad that attention should be continually drawn to copies of this book ... I am in full sympathy with the doctrine laid down by Sir Ernest Gowers

A delight, a classic of its kind

Great fun to read

Brilliant

A sweetly reasonable and wholly admirable guide

It will delight far wider circles than those to whom it is primarily addressed

Personal and affectionate tribute

Affectionate, familial tribute to this many-sided man.