I absolutely adore this book and have ever since I swiped it from my parents. It's packed with (mostly snarky) excerpts of private letters and published writings from historical and cultural figures past and present. This is not a book to sit down with and read cover to cover, but is wonderful for flitting through, a page here and a page there. ( )

Aah, such a fine, informative entertainment. Frank Muir was a panel member for one of the best of the BBC radio game shows. The Name was "Just A Minute", and the premise was simple: a topic was given to the panel, and then a panelist started to talk about that topic, if the panelist could talk for 60 seconds on the topic, then they got 60 points.
They could be interrupted by the other team for:1) Repetition, in wordage or progression, or 2)digression 3) drying up
The successful challengers had to take over the topic for the remaining number of seconds, subject to the challengers of the original team.
The second part was the definition section where recondite words were defined by the panelists, correct was good, but an amusing false definition was also allowed, if funny enough!,
the third part was the phrase origin, where the panelists had to come up with a humorous but not necessarily true, origin of a common phrase or proverb in English....puns being allowed...and viciously relied on! All the stories had to original and improvised on the spot!
The phrase "prevention is better than cure" was transmogrified into "Brief (a legal document) on "'Shun! (the parade ground command to come to attention) is better than Q.R. ! (Q.R. the Queen's Regulations for military Life!) by means of a five minute narrative about life in the UK's draft army...It remains the British equivalent of "Who's on First" as a comedy classic!
It was not the level of "Duck Dynasty", or "Pawn Stars"!
Frank Muir was the panelist who did that schick, and this book an anthology of some magazine pieces about odd things that had happened in British life in the last three hundred years. Drink nice tea while reading this and you're just in a better world! ( )

Focuses on the imperfections and criticisms of the different fine arts (music, literature, theatre, and art), education, and food/drink throughout history via quotes from and stories of contemporary people. Quite entertaining and easy to read in short doses. ( )

A delightful romp through the accumulated indignation of history. I remember salting my English essays in university with choice morsels. Well worth reading, if only for the exposure to how much English has altered over the centuries. ( )