Have You Eaten Grandma?

Product Information

Have You Eaten Grandma? is a fun and handy book about the complexities of the English language and the power it holds (it just might save your grandma’s life).

Join Gyles Brandreth and Natalie Haynes as they um and er their way from amazeballs to Parliamentary halls, all on the Have You Eaten Grandma? podcast. It’s to die for. In this brilliantly funny tirade and guide, Gyles anatomizes the linguistic horrors of our times, tells us where we've been going wrong (and why) and shows us how, in future, we can get it right every time. Is 'alright' all right? You'll find out right here. From dangling clauses to gerunds, you'll also discover why Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses. Gyles Daubeney Brandreth is an British theatre producer, actor, politician, journalist, author, and TV presenter. Born in Germany, he moved to London at the age of three and, after his education at New College, Oxford, he began his career in television. Whether you are obsessed with getting grammar right, baffled by grammar or (like us) just in love with words, you are going to love this. A hilarious and definitive guide to 21st-century language Newcastle Evening Chronicle Prove it, Brandreth. Because these kinds of comments are not made by people who study language. Linguists don’t rank languages in terms of how “rich” they are – because that doesn’t make any sense. You can like a language more than another, but that’s akin to liking one kind of fruit more than another. It’s doesn’t make your favorite fruit better or worse than others. And your opinion matters about as much as a rotten banana.

Christmas Gifts

He is married to writer and publisher Michèle Brown, with whom he co-curated the exhibition of twentieth century children’s authors at the National Portrait Gallery and founded the award-winning Teddy Bear Museum now based at the Polka Theatre in Wimbledon. He is a trustee of the British Forces Foundation, and a former chairman and now vice-president of the National Playing Fields Association. Punctuation is important, but the rules are changing. Spelling is important today in a way that it wasn’t when Shakespeare was a boy. Grammar isn’t set in stone. Once upon a time, to split an infinitive was wrong, wrong, wrong. Since the coming of Star Trek in 1966, when “to boldly go where no man has gone before” was what the now-iconic TV series promised to do, we’ve all been at it. “To actually get,” “to really want,” “to truly love,” “to just go”—you may not like them as turns of phrase, but take it from me: they are acceptable nowadays. End of.

This is what we call anecdotal evidence. One schoolboy on one bus in one city on one day and in one sentence is given as evidence that like “has become the go-to linguistic filler of our times”. I know you think you’re good with language, Gyles, but that’s not how linguistics works.

It can be much harder than it seems; commas, colons, semi-colons, and even apostrophes can drive us all mad at times, but it riles no one more than the longest-serving resident of Countdown's Dictionary Corner, grammar guru Gyles Brandreth. The problem with the good parts in this book are that you have to wade through the garbage to get to them. You will literally learn wrong things on your way to the good things. And this is knowledge that you can get other places – where it’s not sandwiched between two slices of moldy bread. Have you eaten grammar? A] witty usage guide… Bolstered with an epilogue giving straightforward definitions for different parts of speech, his passionate, enlightening, and easily navigable manual is certainly the right book at the right time.” I thought the author often got bogged down while comparing US spelling, vocabulary and so on with the British versions of the same.

I’ll admit that I love languages and therefore find the subject interesting. Still, I wasn’t expecting the humour, and there is plenty. Gyles Brandreth not only provides a lot of information on the English language, he does so in a very accessible manner, enticing the reader with his funny, and often cheeky, voice. As he states, the way we express ourselves is a kind of power. Acquiring it doesn’t have to be a hardship. On the contrary, it can be entertaining, as seen in the following poem. Try reading it out loud :0) More misidentified passives –…And Read All Over on The subject is not (always) the “doer” in a sentence This is a grammar guide that only Gyles Brandreth could write! Full of humour throughout, this is his definitive guide to punctuation, spelling and good English for the twenty-first century Stratford-Upon-Avon HeraldFrom award-winning author G. Willow Wilson, The Bird King is an epic journey set during the reign of the last sultan in the Iberian peninsula at the height of the Spanish Inquisition. If you are from one of the nations that England colonized and got through that without cringing, here is more. And this is about the name of the book. Very disappointed with excessive use of the ‘f’ word. I would expect better from people who love the language! It can be much harder than it seems; commas, colons, semi-colons and even apostrophes can drive us all mad at times, but it riles no one more than the longest-serving resident of Countdown's Dictionary Corner, grammar guru Gyles Brandreth.