This book looks at how historical linguists accommodate the written records used for evidence. The limitations of the written record restrict our view of the past and the conclusions that we can draw about its language. However, the same limitations force us to be aware of the particularities of language. This collection blends the philological with the linguistic, combining questions of the particular with generalizations about language change.

This book is a detailed examination of social connections to language evaluation with a specific focus on the values associated with both prescriptivism and descriptivism. The chapters, written by authors from many different linguistic and national backgrounds, use a variety of approaches and methods to discuss values in linguistic prescriptivism. In particular, the chapters break down the traditional binary approaches that characterize prescriptive discourse to create a view of the complex phenomena associated with prescriptivism and the values of those who practice it. Most importantly, this volume continues serious academic conversations about prescriptivism and lays the foundation for continued exploration.

Don Chapman tells for the first time the story of the "Oxford Playhouse", to coincide with the seventieth anniversary of its present home in Beaumont Street, Oxford. He traces the history of this great theater back to its earliest roots in a production of Agamemnon in 1880 which led to the founding of the Oxford University Dramatic Society, the rebuilding of Oxford's New Theater and, eventually, the launch of the Playhouse itself. Jane Ellis was the 'young, obscure actress' from London who made it happen, motivated by a desire for a venue where she herself might play decent roles. She asked J.B. Fagan (who was to produce the first successful Chekhov play in England) to be the theater's first director. Subsequent directors who made their mark included Stanford Holme, Eric Dance (who rebuilt the theater in Beaumont Street in 1938), Frank Shelley, Peter Hall, Peter Wood, Frank Hauser, Minos Volanakis, Gordon McDougall, Nicolas Kent and Richard Williams.The book also celebrates a galaxy of actors including Flora Robson, John Gielgud, Maggie Smith, Ronnie Barker, Judi Dench and Helena Bonham-Carter and records the first steps of countless students from Peter Brook to Maria Aitken, Diana Quick to Rowan Atkinson, including a few, like Edward Heath and Joanna Trollope, who gained distinction in other spheres. Most fascinating is the role of the University of Oxford. Using the legal powers invested in Vice Chancellors, Dr Lewis Farnell almost stifled the Playhouse at birth in 1923. And even from 1961 to 1987, when the Playhouse was the University Theater, Dr Chapman describes its relationship with the University as 'a shotgun marriage that ended in a messy divorce'.Since reopening in 1991 following a four-year closure, the theater has flourished as an independent trust with support from the University, Arts Council England and other donors, staging a varied program to delight audiences old and new and benefiting in the process from the sea change in academic attitudes to drama. Thea Shurrock, Rosamund Pike and Holly Kendrick are just three of more recent students who have followed in the footsteps of Michael Palin, Imogen Stubbs and Mel Smith and made names for themselves.

The medical consultant of Oxford University’s Bodleian Library told Don Chapman to strip off, took one look at him and demanded: ‘Young man, how do you expect to get through life with a body like that?’ Seventy years later he is still trying. In this, his latest book, a tongue-in-cheek memoir called ‘A Tenpenny Dip in Paradise and other flights of fancy’, Don draws on some of the wackier articles he wrote during forty years in journalism to explore the excitements, fascinations and absurdities of the twentieth century and dip a wary toe into the turbulent waters of the twenty-first.

When the reincarnation of the greatest Tibetan lama, Jey Tsong Khapa, returns to his birthplace in Hawaii at age 18 after 16 years studying in the Himalayas, the Chinese secret police Te-Wu set out to kill him. But a beautiful young woman becomes the mistress of the leader of Te-Wu in Hawaii, and thus learns of their plans. She calls an old friend, Kamasami Khan, leader in Hawaii of the secret Free Tibet Warrior Society, and the young lama goes on the lam, as a FTWS member acts as his stunt double in public. Turns out that young woman, Bodhicita Guzman, is the young lama's eternal consort. Soon he decides to don his robes and be himself, exposing he and his consort to Chinese agents. And they are not shy about acting.

In New York City in the 1830s and '40s, young Alick Cartwright grew up playing all kinds of games that used bats, balls and bases - but none of them were called baseball, for that game had not yet been created. In his teens, Alick and his friends ventured into other neighborhoods to play various ball games, including at the grassy squares at Madison Square and Murray Hill, and he earns a reputation as one of the best players in the city, whatever the game, be it cricket, rounders, barn ball, burn ball, stick ball, soak ball, goal ball, town ball or several "old cat" games - one old cat (one base), two old cat (two bases), etc. But one thing drove Alick crazy - every area played by different rules, sometimes using two bases, sometimes five, and the number of players on the field varied from just a few to more than 20. Sometimes a base was a tall wooden stick in the ground, sometimes a rock, sometimes a barrel top or just an old hat. Plus, the distances between bases were always different. Worse, because the rules were always different, they spent as much time arguing about the rules as playing the game. Alick played for one reason, to have fun, and arguing was not fun. After a particularly contentious argument that nearly comes to blows until Alick intervenes, he sits down with pencil, paper and ruler to create a more perfect game. After his best pal nearly dies after getting hit in the head by a thrown ball during a game of town ball, Alick writes down the rules of modern baseball. A year later, he organizes the first team, the Knickerbockers - as in the knickerbocker Fire Company, of which he was a member, as well as the first game and first scorecard. Three years later Alick is among the thousands of people joining the 1849 Gold Rush. He kept a meticulous journal along the way, a copy of which I obtained from Bishop Museum in Honolulu. I also obtained everything the Baseball Hall of Fame has on Cartwright, made several visits to the Hawaii State Archive in Honolulu. And while Alick is the focus of this book, the Oregon and California Trails and all of the other emigrants are co-stars. Growing up in Oregon, where the state seal includes oxen pulling a covered wagon and the state song includes the lyric "land of the pioneers," and having been born in the Gold Rush centennial year of 1949, I was always aware of the history and lasting influence of the Oregon Trail pioneers. It turns out that the California Trail, after it breaks off from the Oregon Trail, was even more perilous in some ways than the Oregon. The story of the courage and determination of all the people - men, women, children - and their animals who crossed rivers, plains, deserts and mountains to reach Oregon and California is also one that needs to be retold, especially in a world where yesterday is old news already. Without the pioneers of 1849 and ensuing years, America would not be the nation it is today, in so many ways. Their example too is worth remembering and emulating. My teaching degree and classroom experience, along with years of coaching kids, not to mention parenting, show through in the form of questions at the end of each chapter. Together, they emphasize vocabulary, mathematics, geology, geography, health and literary concepts, among other academic topics, as well as questions designed to explore human relationships, personal responsibility and ethics, and personal thoughts and feelings. The questions can be used by school teachers and home-schoolers, or by parents reading with their children (or ignored altogether). The story is written for young people, but the drama is real and riveting for any age. I hope you'll find "The Ball That Changed The World" both entertaining and informative, and Alexander Joy Cartwright Jr. to be as admirable and heroic a fellow as I do.