Dent's Modern Tribes: The Secret Languages of Britain

While today’s magicians aim to entertain, magic for their predecessors was a far weightier affair. Together with alchemy and astrology, it was held to be an essential part of an all-round education, one component of ‘grammar’ within the ‘trivium’ designed to teach the elite how to learn. Thanks to this system of learning, ‘grammar’ encompassed an e

Our language has over 3,000 words for being drunk, from ‘schnockered’ to ‘spifflicated’, ‘befuggered’ to ‘woofled’, and ‘phalanxed’ to ‘liquorish’. Benjamin Franklin famously collected 200 more synonyms for a slathered state, including ‘cherubimical’ (describing a happy drunk who goes around hugging everyone), as well as ‘he’s taken off his conside

In some ways I’ve been writing this book all my life.

mouseholing: blowing an entry hole in a wall of an enemy building rather than entering via a potentially booby-trapped door.

her exposé of the hidden rules of social behaviour, Watching the English, Kate Fox examines the social rules that are particular to all drinking places.

As for the hymns, this is where a vicar’s chuckles really come into their own. Fish and Chips refers to two hymns that are regularly paired together at funerals, namely ‘The Lord’s my Shepherd’ and ‘Abide with Me’.

baseball on valium’, as some would describe it).

Journalism, according to G.K. Chesterton in the 1920s, ‘largely consists in saying “Lord Jones Dead” to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive’.

It’s not at all unheard of for the flutes to imitate the sound of a kettle when they decide it’s time for tea, or to whistle out the tune of laughter when a hapless outsider walks across the hall. It’s all part of the humour of the pit, and it’s a chance to liven things up a bit too.