Author: Philip Gooden

Once upon a time, the worst words you could utter were short, simple and tended to be four letters in length. Now things are more complicated. To b...

'Another clever criminal plunge into history' GuardianElizabeth I is nearing the end of her reign with no direct heir and plots and rumours of rebe...

'Highly entertaining' Sunday TimesIn the last decade of Elizabeth I's reign, Nick Revill, an aspiring young actor, comes to London seeking fame and...

'Highly entertaining' Sunday TimesMidsummer 1601. Nick Revill and his fellow actors in the Chamberlain's Men are journeying across the Wiltshire Do...

The English language that is spoken by one billion people around the world is a linguistic mongrel, its vocabulary a diverse mix resulting from cen...

Born as a Germanic tongue with the arrival in Britain of the Anglo-Saxons in the early medieval period, heavily influenced by Norman French from th...