Danny Bate

Recollections from an Author’s First Year Though it pains me somewhat to acknowledge the fact, my début book, Why Q Needs U, was released into the wild one year ago.

Every September 28th, thanks to a brutal fratricide over a thousand years ago, the Czech Republic gives itself a day off.

When a Roman emperor updated the alphabet – and basically nobody listened to him.

Or: Why don’t people in the Iliad and Odyssey write anything down?

Or: Wait, shouldn’t those two English words be spelled with SH?

It’s often nice to spot familiar faces where you don’t expect them, like an unforeseen run-in with a friend while on holiday.

In the sea between Britain and Ireland, there lies a much smaller island that is geographically and politically separate from the two landmasses on either side.

A personal newsflash: today (June 2nd) sees the US release of my bestselling banquet of historico-linguistic nerdery, Why Q Needs U – that book about the alphabet and the English language that came out in the UK last October and has consistently haunted B…

Once, in my halcyon days of doctoral studies, I gave an informal presentation that ended not with the typical slide “any questions?”

It seems all too appropriate that a language infamous for its quirks of spelling should display a quirk of spelling in its very name.

As stable as they may seem, every sound of every spoken language, at some point in the past, didn’t exist.

I remain resolute in the belief that ordinary, ten-a-penny words are far more interesting than the rare jewels and prized flowers of any language’s lexicon.