By Hook Or By Crook: A Journey in Search of English

Contemporary Review, Spring, 2008

By Hook Or By Crook: A Journey in Search of English. David Crystal. Harper Collins. [pounds sterling]16.99. xv + 314 pages. ISBN 978-0-00-723558-2. Between 2002 and 2005 David Crystal acted as linguistics consultant to a BBC series called Voices, which aimed to 'record and celebrate the whole range of present-day British English, accents and dialects'.

That experience combined with his reading of W.G. Sebald's novel, The Rings of Saturn, inspired this 'journey in search of English' which takes him not just throughout Britain but to Europe, the United States, South Africa, India and Australia. Like any intelligent and curious traveller, he takes every opportunity that is offered to stop to look or talk, or else to take a side route. But somehow he manages to hold it all together in a narrative that draws both on his probably unparalleled knowledge and understanding of English and its development and on a wealth of linguistic facts that range from the merely interesting to the positively quirky--take, for example, the story of the South American parrots who enabled Alexander von Humboldt to identify a language made extinct when their original owners were wiped out by a rival group of Indians. Always ready to learn himself, this passionate linguist makes an excellent guide and companion for the journey. (S.T.)