‘A riveting account of the pre-First World War years . . . The Age of Decadence is an enormously impressive and enjoyable read.’ Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times‘A magnificent account of a less than magnificent epoch.’ Jonathan Meades, Literary ReviewThe folk-memory of Britain in the years before the Great War is of a powerful, contented, orderly and thriving country. She commanded a vast empire. She bestrode inter...

"Be in no doubt: the beer was drunk but the man drank the beer.""We must avoid vulgarities like 'front up'. If someone is 'fronting up' a television show, then he is presenting it."Simon Heffer's incisive and amusingly despairing emails to colleagues at the The Daily Telegraph about grammatical mistakes and stylistic slips have attracted a growing band of ardent fans over recent years. Now, in his new book Strictly English, he makes an impassioned...

In his best-selling Strictly English Simon Heffer explained how to write and speak our language well. In Simply English he offers an entertaining and supremely useful A–Z guide to frequent errors, common misunderstandings and stylistic howlers. What is the difference between amend and emend, between imply and infer, and between uninterested and disinterested? When should one put owing to rather than due to...

Simon Heffer's new book forms an ambitious exploration of the making of the Victorian age and the Victorian mind.Britain in the 1840s was a country wracked by poverty, unrest and uncertainty, where there were attempts to assassinate the Queen and her prime minister, and the ruling class lived in fear of riot and revolution. By the 1880s it was a confident nation of progress and prosperity, transformed not just by industrialisation but by new attitudes to politics, education, women ...

Should England be independent from Scotland?May 1999. The Scots have their first opportunity in 300 years to elect their own parliament. In 2014 that referendum will finally take place.To many in England, the continuing rise of Scottish nationalism causes unease. Scotland could well choose to leave the United Kingdom. In this provocative polemic, Simon Heffer argues that England must let Scotland go. The lessons of trying to coerce Ireland should have been learnt: there is ...

**‘An epic new history . . . a work of epic scholarship, breathtaking range, and piercing originality’ Daily Express‘An astonishing achievement of narrative history . . . I think the word is "magisterial".’ Spectator**‘Excellent, thorough, detailed and combatively argued.’ Sunday Times***______________________________________Sing As We Go* is an astonishingly ambitious overview of the political, social and cultural...

The English language has evolved throughout its history, and usually for good reasons. However, in recent years, egged on by social media and the ubiquity and velocity of the internet, it has been subject to some grave assaults. There appear no longer to be any rules, in an era when, thanks to the web (another word to have changed its meaning) everyone can be a published author, completely unedited and unregulated. This often has dire consequences for the English tongue.Simon Heffe...

'There is an old saying, 'Murder will out.' I am really unable to see why this should be so...'Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal (1907) inspired the classic Ealing film Kind Hearts and Coronets. But though both works are comedies about a serial murderer, they are different creatures. The eponymous narrator of Roy Horniman's novel, son of a Jewish commercial traveller, offers his memoirs from the condemned cell , having murdered six people who s...

A tweedy purveyor of folklore; too many larks ascending and too much Linden Lea: no composer's work has ever been more cruelly stereotyped than that of Ralph Vaughan Williams. The truth could hardly have been more different: that folksy feel masked the highest sophistication, that countrified air the most audacious experimentation. If, unlike his Germanizing contemporary Elgar, Vaughan Williams did indeed open the way to a distinctively English Music, his was an Englishness which owed noth...

The Telegraph newspapers maintain their high standards of accuracy, literacy and grammar thanks to a comprehensive style book used by all their journalists, covering everything from the correct title of a baron to the spelling of Gorden Kaye’s Christian name when writing about Allo, Allo. But its rigour and exactitude are complemented by a deliciously baleful, even testy, wit – a quality much valued by, and indeed demonstrated by, its own readership in Aurum’s hugely successful Unpublished...

‘In this fascinating book, Andrew Hindmoor makes sense of the tangled past we have just lived through ... sprinkling wit, insight and analytical verve over his energetic narrative. In contemporary British political history, his will be the distinctive voice of his generation' Peter HennessyVladimir Lenin, an occasional resident of North London who went on to other things, has been credited with once saying that there are decades where nothing happens but weeks when...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'A visionary book' Philip Pullman'Essential and magnificent' George Monbiot'Deft and wonderfully poetic' Grace BlakeleyThe Right have hijacked Englishness. Can it be reclaimed?Today, the only people who dare speak of Englishness are cheerleaders for Brexit, exceptionalism and imperial nostalgia. But there is another England, hiding i...