“QUOTE ... UNQUOTE”
NEW BOOKS
Published to coincide
with the 30th anniversary of Quote ...
Unquote in 2006 is Brewer’s Famous
Quotations: 5,000 Quotations and the Stories Behind
Them (Weidenfeld & Nicolson). Now it appears in paperback for the first
time, published by Chambers Harrap:
This extract from the
introduction explains the purpose of it:
Traditionally, there
have been two ways to go about compiling a dictionary of quotations. One has been to anticipate the kind of
quotations that readers will be interested in and then to provide accurate
wording and source material for them.
The second has been to put forward quotations that the compiler has
gathered together – possibly on a theme or themes – and that the reader may in
time find useful or simply enjoyable.
Brewer’s
Famous Quotations and the Stories Behind Them is
not quite either of these things. What
it seeks to provide is the context for and ancillary information about quotations
which do already exist – that is to say, which are written or spoken words that
have already been quoted, but about which there is something to be said for
their meaning to be properly appreciated.
A complaint that can often be made about dictionaries
of quotations – however substantial and ‘comprehensive’ they may be – is that
they lack contextual commentary or, indeed, any commentary at all. There is a tendency for such books simply to
deposit the minimum of information upon the page and then hurry on, however
misleading (or inaccurate) this may be.
‘The glory of [Nigel Rees’s] choice of
quotations is twofold. First they are
proper quotations, not merely flowers gathered for a thoughtful posy, a habit
particularly of American quotation books.
Secondly they are put in context, at least regarding their provenance
and later use, so that the book is “composed largely of footnotes”’ – The Spectator
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My other most recent publication
is More Tea, Vicar? An Embarrassment of
Domestic Catchphrases, published in hardback by National Trust Books. This is a slightly revised version of my
earlier book Oops, Pardon, Mrs Arden! (Robson, 2001):
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My other books include:
All Gong
and No Dinner: 1,001 Homely Phrases and Curious Domestic Sayings (Collins, 2007).
Over the past thirty years, thousands of listeners have shared their
informal family sayings with BBC Radio’s Quote
...Unquote and asked whether anybody else knew of them.
With All Gong and No Dinner,
Nigel Rees has produced both a fresh and an updated celebration of these
domestic catchphrases, household words, rhymes, old wives’ sayings, and
proverbial pearls of wisdom. He has searched for the origins of hundreds of the
conversation clippings which together illustrate all aspects of domestic life.
Whether unique to their owners, or instantly recognizable, they reveal
everything from how we talk about our relatives and neighbours to the ‘nannyisms’ embedded since childhood.
Organized thematically, these euphemisms, exclamations, put downs and
vivid vignettes, take us all the way from the kitchen to the bedroom, via the
bathroom and back again. They underscore both the warm truths and the perfect
nonsense of everyday family life.
Ever wondered why people say, ‘Well,
I’ll go to the foot of our stairs’?
Have you ever been fobbed off with ‘That’s
for me to know and you to wonder’?
Do you know someone who is ‘all fur
coat and no knickers’?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you are already part
of the wonderful world of family phrases.
Containing many of the origins and meanings of our everyday expressions,
here is a treasury of delights for language lovers everywhere.
all gong and no dinner – meaning, of a person, that he is ‘all talk and no
action’. What you might say of a loud-mouthed person who is somewhat short on
achievement. Current since the mid-20th century at least.
‘So far, all we have had from the Government is “all gong and no dinner” – to
use a phase that a constituent of mine used in a public meeting. In other
words, the sound and the fury have been there but the delivery has been
missing’ – speaker at Welsh Grand Committee (
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New in paperback is:
A Man About a Dog: Euphemisms & Other Examples of Verbal
Squeamishness (Collins, 2006).
‘Euphemisms are
unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne’ – Quentin Crisp
Here are 2,467 examples
of verbal perfume. Nigel Rees, one of
Britain’s best-known commentators on popular language, has ranged far and wide
to collect and comment on this huge selection of euphemisms – those expressions
which so inventively display the art of mincing words and which resolutely
avoid calling a spade a spade.
From the politically correct
to the highly incorrect, A Man About a Dog goes in ruthless pursuit of the coy, the
prudish, the obfuscatory and the blatant reshaping of
the truth. So, whether you wish to
‘discuss Ugandan affairs’ with someone, or have issues with your ‘ambient replenishment
assistant’ when you go shopping or need to work on your ‘terminological
inexactitude’ when you ring in sick to work, this wonderful book will guide,
illuminate and entertain along the way.
The New Statesman called A Man About a Dog ‘an amusing, meticulously researched
catalogue of the social forces that shape the way we speak.’
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A Word In Your Shell-Like: 6,000 Curious &
Everyday Phrases is published by Collins and is a modern, entertaining guide to the
wonderful world of phrases, familiar and unfamiliar. It unravels the meaning, origin and usage of
over 6,000 phrases from catchphrases, book and film titles, idioms and clichés,
to nicknames, slogans and short quotations.
In the
In case you are puzzled
by the title, here is my entry on the phrase, as it appears in the book:
in your shell‑like
(ear). Phrase used when asking to have a ‘quiet
word’ with someone: ‘(Let me have a word) in your ear’ is all it means, but it
makes gentle fun of a poetic simile.
Keats in ‘To – ’ (1817) has: ‘Had I a man’s
fair form, then might my sighs / Be echoed swiftly through that ivory shell, / Thine ear and find thy gentle heart’ and Thomas Hood’s Bianca’s Dream (1827) has: ‘Her small
and shell-like ear’. ‘So, Effie, turn
that shell-like ear, / Nor to my sighing close it’ –
P.G. Wodehouse, ‘The Gourmet’s Love-Song’ in Punch (24 December 1902).
From an episode of the BBC radio show Round the Horne (31 March 1968): ‘I started to whisper endearments
into her shell-like.’ The Complete Naff Guide (1983) has ‘a
word in your shell-like ear’ among ‘naff things schoolmasters say’. Sometimes
the word ‘ear’ is not spoken but understood.
‘Don’t you think you ought to whisper in my shell-like what this is all
about?’ – Kerry Greenwood, Murder in Montparnasse, Chap. 12 (2002).
A Word in Your Shell-Like was described by The Guardian as ‘a treasury of stimulating
excursions and digressions.’
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