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? Why should the temptation to write actually, basically or at this moment in time always be strenuously resisted? How does one use an apostrophe correctly, ensure that one understands what alibi really means, and avoid the perils of the double negative? With articles on everything from punctuation to tabloid English to adverbs and adjectives, Simply English is the essential companion for anyone who cares about the language and wants to use it correctly.

Sing As We Go is an astonishingly ambitious overview of the political, social and cultural history of the country from 1919 to 1939. It explores and explains the politics of the period, and puts such moments of national turmoil as the General Strike of 1926 and the Abdication Crisis of 1936 under the microscope. It offers pen portraits of the era's most significant figures. It traces the changing face of Britain as cars made their first mass appearance, the suburbs sprawled, and radio and cinema became the means of mass entertainment. And it probes the deep divisions that split the nation: between the haves and have-nots, between warring ideological factions, and between those who promoted accommodation with fascism in Europe and those who bitterly opposed it. __________________________________________ Praise for the series: 'Scholarly, objective and extremely well written. A masterclass . . . Heffer's eye for the telling detail is evident on almost every page.' Andrew Roberts, 5*, Telegraph 'Gloriously rich and spirited . . . colourful, character driven history.' Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times 'Enlightening . . . Robust opinion, an eye for telling detail and a gift for bringing historical figures alive.' History Books of the Year, Daily Mail

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 nothing to narrow-mindedness or lack of artistic enterprise. Fifty years after his death in 1958, Vaughan Williams' reputation is greater than ever before and there is a resurgence of interest in his music. Re-issued to coincide with this anniversary, Simon Heffer's perceptive book lends weight to the increasingly compelling case for Vaughan Williams' recognition as the most important English composer of the twentieth century. 'A vivid and appealing picture of an irresistibly likeable figure ... I enjoyed this little book enormously.'Spectator 'An affectionate, accurate and shrewd account of Vaughan Williams' life ... the author's astute commentary on it betokens close and knowledgeable acquaintance.' Sunday Telegraph

'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 stood between him and an earldom he hoped to inherit. Through Israel's story Horniman explores and parodies the anti-Semitic attitudes of Edwardian England. 'A superb thriller, but also a disturbing study in human nature. The narrative pace never slackens, thanks to the spareness and elegance of Horniman's prose... it is a book of its time, quite faithful to it, and (despite its 400 pages) over all too quickly.' Simon Heffer, in his Preface

'A brilliant and scholarly biography of an extraordinary figure.' Lord Blake, "Country Life"

'A fresh, engaging, conscientious account of one of the great Victorians.' Michael Foot, "London Review of Books"

'A thorough and convincing account of 'the sage''. Peter Ackroyd, "Times"

Thomas Carlyle was the most influential man of letters of his day, and his vivid account of the French Revolution remains one of the classic histories. Even George Eliot, no admirer, wrote: 'It is an idle question to ask whether his books will be read a century hence; if they were all burnt as the grandest of Suttes on his funeral pyre, it would only be like cutting down an oak after its acorns have sown a forest.'

Simon Heffer draws upon previously unavailable papers to reassess a magnificent, defiant and often lonely individualist whose idiosyncratic and passionate books brought him universal fame.

From Macaulay in the 19th century to Fukuyama in the late 20th, historians have often been lulled into thinking that things can only get better. Such belief in progress, argues leading political commentator Simon Heffer, may be typical of times of plenty, but it ignores a less palatable truth: that, since the beginnings of recorded history, the major events in international relations can be attributed to a single cause, the desire by rulers to assert or protect their power. Taking a panoramic view from the days of Thucydides up to the present, Heffer offers a fourfold analysis of the motive forces behind the pursuit of power: land, wealth, God and minds. If we understand these forces, he contends, we can more clearly understand why history is destined to repeat itself.

'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 Review The 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 international commerce. Her citizens were living longer, profiting from civil liberties their grandparents only dreamt of, and enjoying an expanding range of comforts and pastimes. The mood of pride and self-confidence is familiar from Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance marches, newsreels of George V's coronation and the London's great Edwardian palaces. Yet things were very different below the surface. In The Age of Decadence Simon Heffer exposes the contradictions of late-Victorian and Edwardian Britain. He explains how, despite the nation's massive power, a mismanaged war against the Boers in South Africa created profound doubts about her imperial destiny. He shows how attempts to secure vital social reforms prompted the twentieth century's gravest constitutional crisis and coincided with the worst industrial unrest in British history. He describes how politicians who conceded the vote to millions more men disregarded women so utterly that female suffragists' public protest bordered on terrorism. He depicts a ruling class that fell prey to degeneracy and scandal. He analyses a national psyche that embraced the motor-car, the sensationalist press and the science fiction of H. G. Wells, but also the Arts and Crafts of William Morris and the nostalgia of A. E. Housman. And he concludes with the crisis that in the summer of 1914 threatened the existence of the United Kingdom - a looming civil war in Ireland. He lights up the era through vivid pen-portraits of the great men and women of the day - including Gladstone, Parnell, Asquith and Churchill, but also Mrs Pankhurst, Beatrice Webb, Baden-Powell, Wilde and Shaw - creating a richly detailed panorama of a great power that, through both accident and arrogance, was forced to face potentially fatal challenges. 'A devastating critique of prewar Britain . . . disturbingly relevant to the world in which we live.' Gerard DeGroot, The Times 'You won't put it down . . . A really riveting read.' Rana Mitter, BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking

50 speeches from every period of British history from the medieval era to the present and a fascinating dip-in history title that will both inspire readers and give them a greater understanding of British history. The speechmakers are: King Henry V; Queen Elizabeth I; King Charles I; Oliver Cromwell; Earl of Shelburne; Edmund Burke (3); Charles James Fox (2); William Pitt (2); Warren Hastings; William Wilberforce; R.B. Sheridan; Robert Peel; Charles Grey; Thomas Carlyle; Lord Palmerston; John Bright (2); Benjamin Disraeli; William Gladstone; James Campbell-Bannerman; F.E. Smith; David Lloyd George (2); Stanley Baldwin; King Edward VIII; King George VI; Winston Churchill (4); Aneurin Bevan; Harold Macmillan (2); Hugh Gaitskell (2); Nigel Birch; Harold Wilson; Enoch Powell (2); Michael Foot; Margaret Thatcher (2); Neil Kinnock; Geoffrey Howe; Charles Spencer; Tony Blair.

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 and the working class. That it should have changed so radically was very largely the work of an astonishingly dynamic and high-minded group of people - politicians and philanthropists, writers and thinkers - who in a matter of decades fundamentally remade the country, its institutions and its mindset, and laid the foundations for modern society. It traces the evolution of British democracy and shows how early laissez-faire attitudes to the lot of the less fortunate turned into campaigns to improve their lives and prospects. It analyses the birth of new attitudes to education, religion and science. And it shows how even such aesthetic issues as taste in architecture were swept in to broader debates about the direction that the country should take. In the process, Simon Heffer looks at the lives and deeds of major politicians, from the devout and principled Gladstone to the unscrupulous Disraeli; at the intellectual arguments that raged among writers and thinkers such as Matthew Arnold, Thomas Carlyle, and Samuel Butler; and at the 'great projects' of the age, from the Great Exhibition to the Albert Memorial. Drawing heavily on previously unpublished documents, he offers a superbly nuanced insight into life in an extraordinary era, populated by extraordinary people - and how our forebears' pursuit of perfection gave birth to modern Britain.

_______________________________ 'A brilliant history: The first serious and really wide-ranging history of the Home Front during the Great War for decades. Scholarly, objective and extremely well-written. Filled with surprising revelations and empathy. Heffer's eye for the telling detail is evident on almost every page. A remarkable intellectual and literary achievement.' - ANDREW ROBERTS, TELEGRAPH _______________________________ A major new work of history on the profound changes in British society during the First World War The Great War saw millions of men volunteer for or be recruited into the Army, their lives either cut short or overturned. Women were bereaved, enlisted to work in agriculture, government and engineering, yet still expected to hold together homes and families. But while the conflict caused social, economic and political devastation, it also provoked revolutionary change on the home front. Simon Heffer uses vivid portraits to present a nuanced picture of a pivotal era. While the Great War caused loss on an appalling scale, it also advanced the emancipation of women, brought notions of better health care and education, and pointed the way to a less deferential, more democratic future. _____________________________ 'Staring at God is a vast compendium of atrocious political conduct. Refreshing. A trenchant history.' - GERARD DE GROOT, THE TIMES 'A magisterial history' - MELANIE MCDONAGH, DAILY MAIL 'Gloriously rich and spirited [...] it zips along, leavened by so many wonderful cultural and social details.' - DOMINIC SOUTHBROOK, SUNDAY TIMES 'Ambitious in its scope, content and approach. Masterly.' - CHARLES VYVYAN, STANDPOINT 'Fascinating stuff.' - SPECTATOR 'Possibly the finest, most comprehensive analysis of the home front in the Great War ever produced.' - LITERARY REVIEW 'Every bit as good as its two predecessors. Illuminating.' - EXPRESS 'Absorbing' - NEW STATESMAN

""Be in no doubt: the beer was drunk but the man drank the beer."" A master English stylist shows how it's done.
Simon Heffer's incisive and amusingly despairing emails to colleagues at the""the" Daily""Telegraph" about grammatical mistakes and stylistic slips have found their way on to the internet and have attracted a growing band of ardent fans over recent years. Now he makes an impassioned case for an end to the sloppiness that has become a hallmark of everyday speech and writing, and shows how accuracy and clarity are within the grasp of anyone who is prepared to take the time to master a few simple rules. If you wince when you see "different than" in print, or are offended by people who think that "infer" and "imply" mean the same thing, then this book will provide reassurance that you are not alone. If you have a suspicion that it is wrong to say "the car collided with the tree" but are not quite sure why, then it will set you straight. And if you believe that precise and elegant English really does matter, then it will prove required reading.