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The culture of swearing has changed radically within my lifetime. I was just 21, with a fairly humble job in theatre, when I found myself guarding the door against a mob of marauding paparazzi. They were intent on getting at Kenneth Tynan, the theatre critic, who had just uttered the F-word on television for the first time in history. These days, while a new puritanism seems to be affecting young people’s actual behaviour, their speech is peppered with the F-word even without

Words have always intrigued me. I amused my English teacher, the wonderful Jack Roberts, by weaving new words into school essays: perfunctory, desultory and mendacious were early examples. Not an easy task. I was hoping to impress and also showing off. Mr Roberts was perhaps more amused than impressed by my clumsy efforts, though I also got a hint of encouragement...

I was standing in line at the bakery here in the Dordogne last week—yes, another tale from the land of crisp baguettes and existential shrugging—when an English couple ahead of me asked, in oddly precise tones, for "deux croissants et un pain au chocolat, s’il vous plaît". The woman turned to her partner with a triumphant smile, clearly proud of her linguistic victory. Then, after paying, she muttered just loud...

Sensational headlines about the rising toxic tide of Americanisms inundating our defenceless language produce predictable, periodic...

The first language I gave up on was my mother tongue, or rather my mother’s tongue: German. I’m 4 years old riding in the back of a...