Sign In Join Now
User Accessibility
  • Increase Font

  • Invert Colours

Search for a Book Browse Books Menu
The Adventure of English Cover Play Sample

Sample may contain unsuitable content.

Request CD

Share this book:

The Adventure of English

AuthorMelvyn Bragg

NarratorRobert Powell

Duration12h 9m

CategoriesAdult Non-Fiction, General Non Fiction

PublisherChivers

VersionUnabridged

  Add to Favourites List

An expansion of the ideas contained in the acclaimed ITV series,'The Adventure of English 500 to 2000AD'. The remarkable story of English, from its beginning as a minor Germanic dialect to its position as a truly established global language.

0 (0 Reviews)
0
0
0
0
0

Related Titles

Routes of English, Series 3, Programme 6 Cover

Routes of English, Series 3, Programme 6

Author: Melvyn Bragg

Routes of English, Series 3, Programme 6

Author Melvyn Bragg

Narrator Melvyn Bragg

SeriesRoutes of English Series 3, Book 6

Duration 27m

The final programme in the series considers the future of English dialects. In the last programme in the series Melvyn looks at Standard English. He is joined by Lynda Mugglestone, Fellow of English Language at Pembroke College, Oxford and John Wells, Professor of Phonetics at the University of London. Together they attempt to answer some of the qu...

View Book
Routes of English, Series 4, Programme 2 Cover

Routes of English, Series 4, Programme 2

Author: Melvyn Bragg

Routes of English, Series 4, Programme 2

Author Melvyn Bragg

Narrator Melvyn Bragg

SeriesRoutes of English Series 4, Book 2

Duration 27m

The English language in India. Despite being the imposed language of the imperial power, English also had the power to unite the nation. The story of the English language in India is also the story of the British merchants, adventurers and colonial administrators for whom the country was the Empire's jewel in the crown. Calcutta, the great Victoria...

View Book
Routes of English, Series 1, Programme 4 Cover

Routes of English, Series 1, Programme 4

Author: Melvyn Bragg

Routes of English, Series 1, Programme 4

Author Melvyn Bragg

Narrator Melvyn Bragg

SeriesRoutes of English Series 1, Book 4

Duration 27m

The language of sex and death, as Chaucer and others capture English speech of the time. Melvyn Bragg travels to the great mediaeval cathedral of Canterbury, with its shrine to the martyr, St. Thomas … Becket. It inspired the pilgrims described by Geoffrey Chaucer in 1395 in The Canterbury Tales, as they set out from the Tabard Inn in Southw...

View Book
Routes of English, Series 4, Programme 6 Cover

Routes of English, Series 4, Programme 6

Author: Melvyn Bragg

Routes of English, Series 4, Programme 6

Author Melvyn Bragg

Narrator Melvyn Bragg

SeriesRoutes of English Series 4, Book 6

Duration 27m

With English now hailed on all sides as the world's first "global" language and the preferred medium of expression from United Biscuits to the United Nations, Melvyn Bragg meets people-like former Dome supremo P.Y. Gerbeau-for whom talking English is the most natural way to speak, yet who didn't absorb it with their mother's milk. Also taking part...

View Book
Voices of the Powerless Cover

Voices of the Powerless

Author: Melvyn Bragg

Voices of the Powerless

Author Melvyn Bragg

Narrator Melvyn Bragg

Duration 6h 20m

Melvyn Bragg follows his long historical exploration of the Routes of English with Voices of the Powerless, the BBC Radio 4 series in which he explores the lives of the ordinary working men and women of Britain at critical moments across the last 1,000 years. The Norman Conquest is his starting point, a time when William the Conqueror's 'harrying...

View Book
In Our Time Cover

In Our Time

Author: Melvyn Bragg

In Our Time

Author Melvyn Bragg

Narrator Melvyn Bragg

Duration 2h 19m

Broadcaster and arts presenter Melvyn Bragg fronts 'The Written World', a five-part BBC Radio 4 series following the origins of writing from its first appearance 6,000 years ago and exploring how it has shaped the world's intellectual history. In the first programme he looks at the technology of writing, and how making signs on clay, wood or parchm...

View Book
Routes of English, Series 4, Programme 3 Cover

Routes of English, Series 4, Programme 3

Author: Melvyn Bragg

Routes of English, Series 4, Programme 3

Author Melvyn Bragg

Narrator Melvyn Bragg

SeriesRoutes of English Series 4, Book 3

Duration 27m

Here we take up the story of Caribbean English where the Brixton Routes left off. For the poet Edward Kamau Braithwaite the legacy of the English language is something from which he, in his tropical landscape, must break free because, as he wrote, "the hurricane does not roar in pentameters". Melvyn Bragg heads off to the Caribbean where he meets a...

View Book
Routes of English, Series 4, Programme 1 Cover

Routes of English, Series 4, Programme 1

Author: Melvyn Bragg

Routes of English, Series 4, Programme 1

Author Melvyn Bragg

Narrator Melvyn Bragg

SeriesRoutes of English Series 4, Book 1

Duration 27m

We explore the rise of powerful non-English linguistic forces in the United States. Starting at Plymouth Rock where the Pilgrim Fathers landed in 1620, Melvyn Bragg follows the development of English in the American colony-from the War of Independence and the founding of the first capital, Philadelphia, right through to the controversial contempora...

View Book
Routes of English, Series 3, Programme 5 Cover

Routes of English, Series 3, Programme 5

Author: Melvyn Bragg

Routes of English, Series 3, Programme 5

Author Melvyn Bragg

Narrator Melvyn Bragg

SeriesRoutes of English Series 3, Book 5

Duration 27m

Here, Melvyn visits Oswestry. Just five miles from the Welsh border, this is a frontier town whose name means "boundary". It's where Offa's Dyke and countless crumbling castles bear witness to centuries of shifting political allegiances. Language too, has been a battleground. Welsh and English have waxed and waned, woven and unravelled. Visit the t...

View Book
Routes of English, Series 4, Programme 5 Cover

Routes of English, Series 4, Programme 5

Author: Melvyn Bragg

Routes of English, Series 4, Programme 5

Author Melvyn Bragg

Narrator Melvyn Bragg

SeriesRoutes of English Series 4, Book 5

Duration 27m

English becomes the language of liberation as Afrikaans takes on the label of oppression. In 1994 the first free democratic elections in South Africa were held, bringing Nelson Mandela to power as the country's first black president. One of the other consequences was the elevation of nine African languages to equal status with English and Afrikaans...

View Book