Globish - Robert McCrum

Globish: How the English Language Became the World's Language by Robert McCrum is a provocative and compelling new look at the course of empire, in which Robert McCrum, coauthor of the best-selling book and television series The Story of English, shows how the language of the Anglo-American imperium has become the world's lingua franca. In fascinating detail he describes the ever-accelerating changes wrought on the language by the far-flung cultures claiming citizenship in the new hegemony. It seems impossible: a small island in the North Atlantic, colonised by Rome, then pillaged for hundreds of years by marauding neighbours, becomes the dominant world power in the nineteenth century.