Eierlegende-wollmilchsau: The Perfect Animal

Just a brief post as I'm running round the country giving talks (Booka Books in Oswestry tonight). I met a German-speaking lady in Edinburgh who told me about the lovely compound word:

Eierlegende-wollmilchsau

That's pronounced roughly I-er-lay-gend-er-vol-milk-sow, and it means egg-laying-wool-milk-pig. The idea of this fabulous animal is that it is perfect. It provides eggs, wool, milk and, finally, bacon. It is therefore the German term for a jack of all trades. Something, or someone, who can do absolutely everything.

There's even a Wikipedia page on this best of beasts, but it's in German.

And if that's not enough for you, you can have a look at my article in yesterday's New York Times.

The Spectator

Here's a little article that I wrote for The Spectator. So you get a thousand words instead of the usual measly hundred.

I'm off touring around Britain this week. If you would like to come along, the new dates are:

Barter Books in Alnwick today
The Edinburgh Bookshop on 26th of November
Rossiter Books in Ross-on-Wye on the 27th of November
Booka Bookshop in Oswestry on 28th of November
Winstones of Sherborne on 4th of December
Waterstones Piccadilly on 5th of December (no talk, just signing and mulled wine)
Blackwells Oxford on 9th of December
Steyning Bookshop in West Sussex on 10th of December
Warwick Books on 11th of December
The Idler Academy in West London on 12th of December.

Britten, Auden and Advertisements

Today is Benjamin Britten's one-hundredth birthday, which is much more important than words. Mind you, Britten was a very poetical composer. I even have an anthology (did you know that anthology means bouquet of flowers in Greek?) purely of poems that Britten set to music.

When Britten was sixteen he was ill at school and therefore confined to the sickroom. He took with him a copy of The Oxford Book of English Verse, that he had won as a school prize. They wouldn't allow him anything musical as that would only encourage him. So he ruled out staves on a sheet of blank paper and set a medieval poem to music.

In his diary he wrote "Write... "Hymn to the Virgin" & a set of variations (1/4 of it) for organ, which are rather rubbish - I rather like the hymn tho'."


They played it at his funeral.

Later on Britten got together with Auden and they wrote an advertising jingle together for the new-fangled telephone (the monopoly on which was owned by the Post Office). Here is what happens when two of the greatest geniuses of the C20th get into catchy advertising.



I love the rhyme of "Moscow" with "Phone kiosk-o".

Poetry Please

Icon Books are running a poetry competition, but one where you have to use elements from The Elements of Eloquence. It's all rather fun and explained here.

And here's me being interviewed by The Spectator.

That's all for today, I'm afraid.

Telegraph

Telegraph is one of those etymological crossroads. The graph bit, from the Greek for writing, links you to an epi-graph (something written on), a photo-graph (something written by light), or graphic (something written, originally).

Tele takes you to telescope (seeing from afar), teleport (carrying afar), and telephone (speak from afar). Tele is Greek for distant, and some people, strange people, therefore get angry about teleporting and television because portering and vision are both Latin and therefore shouldn't be mongreled up with Greek.

According to these people a televangelist is fine, but a television is Just Awful. But a telegraph (written from afar) is just fine.

All of which is a long way round of saying read this review by Charles Moore in today's Telegraph of my brand new book.

P.S. I'm giving a talk at Brendon Books in Taunton tonight, and in Hungerford tomorrow. The remainder of my book peregrination looks like this:

Taunton Literary Festival on 18th of November
The Hungerford Bookshop on 19th of November
Barter Books in Alnwick on 25th of November
The Edinburgh Bookshop on 26th of November
Rossiter Books in Ross-on-Wye on the 27th of November
Booka Bookshop in Oswestry on 28th of November
Blackwells Oxford on 9th of December
Steyning Bookshop in West Sussex on 10th of December
Warwick Books on 11th of December
The Idler Academy in London on 12th of December

I've always imagined that this is what it's like in the offices of The Telegraph

Etymology Maps

Just a link today to this excellent article in the Guardian. It takes common words and shows all their etymological relatives around Europe. Click upon the link and it'll all become clear.

Hungover in Hampstead

Well, that's been an odd week. I actually got up to number 4 on the Amazon bestseller list. This has involved ale passion (the old word for hangover). So, just a reminder to any Londoners that I'm doing a talk at West End Books in West Hampstead tonight at 7:30.

I think you need to contact them first. Just to give them an idea of numbers.