The Adventure of English: The Biography Of A Language
by Melvyn Bragg
Unabridged
read by Robert Powell
English has become the primary language of the world. It is the language used for business, for air traffic control and of course the Internet. Quite an accomplishment for what began as a minor Germanic dialect in about the year 500. This book is a history of the language itself. How did the language become so important? The Church fought the publishing of the Bible in English because this would allow anyone to read it rather than just the official priests. Part of the reason for the spread of English has been the wealth of literature written in English. From Beowulf to Chaucer and of course the vulgar playwright William Shakespeare (who contributed 2,000 new words to the language). The growth of English continues in spite of things like France making it illegal to use English words where good French words could be used. And English continues to change, the English of India for instance allows computer support desks to be located in Mumbai, but communication is not all that easy. English is the collective work of millions of people throughout the ages. It is democratic, ever-changing and ingenious in its assimilation of other cultures. English runs though the heart of world finance, medicine and the Internet, and it is understood by around two thousand million people across the world. It seems set to go on. Yet it was very nearly wiped out in it’s early years. In this book Melvyn Bragg shows us the remarkable story of the English language; from its beginnings to a minor guttural Germanic dialect to its position today as a truly established global language. Along the way its colourful story takes in a host of characters and locations, from the early tribes, Alfred the Great’s stubborn resistance to the Danes, and through its early literary masterpieces such as Beowulf and the bawdy Geoffrey Chaucer; Henry VIII’s battles with the church over bootleg bibles; a ‘coarse’ playwright named William Shakespeare; the songs of the Creole slaves and the words of Davy Crockett; street slang and Dr Johnson’s dictionary; the role of English in India and its adoption in the United States of America which returned the language with full interest.
Great Speeches of the 20th Century
Students and teachers of history, enthusiasts of speechmaking, and
folks needing something different to spice up those mix tapes with will
enjoy this inspired four-disc tour of a century. It's a bit heavy on
events a baby boomer is most likely to be interested in, but there's
nothing wrong with knowing one's audience. For the most part, these
recordings make 20th-century history appear to be happening right now.
It might sound clichéd, but it really is a thrill to hear history in
the making: Woodrow Wilson lying to the American Indians, Gloria
Steinem addressing the National Organization for Women, the launch of
sputnik, Dr. King delivering the "I Have a Dream" speech with intense
clarity and emotion, Kennedy delivering his infamous address to the
nation after being sworn in, the very first recording ever made on an
Edison phonograph, Nixon resigning in shame, Hitler hatefully ranting
about Germanic expansionism, Malcolm X powerfully speaking on black
power, Babe Ruth saying good-bye to baseball, and Neil Armstrong
uttering those famous words as he first steps onto the moon.
Other amazing and instructive tales for your attention!
Here you’ll find the following stories:
1. The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
2. The Tale Of The Flopsy Bunnies.
3. Rapunzel.
4. Jack And The Beanstalk.
5. The Story of Snow White.
6. Petie's Peanut Butter Pizza.
Just For Fun: The Story of An Accidental Revolutionary
The autobiography of a career computer programmer, even an unorthodox
one, may sound less than enthralling, but this breezy account of the
life of Linux inventor Torvalds not only lives up to its insouciant
title, it provides an incisive look into the still-raging debate over
open source code. In his own words (interspersed with co-writer
Diamond's tongue-in-cheek accounts of his interviews with the
absentminded Torvalds), the programmer relates how it all started in
1981 with his grandfather back in Finland, who let him play around on a
Vic 20 computer. At 11 years old, Torvalds was hooked on
computersespecially on figuring out how they ran and on improving their
operating systems. For years, Torvalds did little but program,
upgrading his hardware every couple of years, attending school in a
desultory fashion and generally letting the outside world float by
unnoticed, until he eventually wrote his own operating system, Linux.
In a radical move, he began sharing the code with fellow OS enthusiasts
over the burgeoning Internet in the early 1990s, allowing others to
contribute to and improve it, while he oversaw the process. Even though
Torvalds is now a bigger star in the computer world than Bill Gates,
and companies like IBM are running Linux on their servers, he has
retained his innocence: the book is full of statements like "Open
source makes sense" and "Greed is never good" that seem sincere.
Leavened with an appealing, self-deprecating sense of humor and a
generous perspective that few hardcore coders have, this is a
refreshing read for geeks and the techno-obsessed.
St Hilda
The 7th century saint, Hilda, or Hild as she would have been known then, wielded great religious and political influence in a volatile era. The monasteries she led in the north of England were known for their literacy and learning and produced great future leaders, including 5 bishops. The remains of a later abbey still stand in Whitby on the site of the powerful monastery she headed there.
We gain most of our knowledge of Hilda's life from The Venerable Bede who wrote that she was 66 years in the world, living 33 years in the secular life and 33 dedicated to God. She was baptised alongside the king of Northumbria and with her royal connections, she was a formidable character. Bede writes: “Her prudence was so great that not only indifferent persons but even kings and princes asked and received her advice”. Hild and her Abbey at Whitby hosted the Synod which decided when Easter would be celebrated, following a dispute between different traditions. Her achievements are all the more impressive when we consider that Christianity was still in its infancy in Northumbria.
So what contribution did she make to establishing Christianity in the north of England? How unusual was it for a woman to be such an important figure in the Church at the time? How did her double monastery of both men and women operate on a day-to-day basis? And how did she manage to convert a farmhand into England's first vernacular poet?
