‘most truly contemptible performances’ John Horne Took, quoted by Henry Hitchings, Dr Johnson’s Dictionary: The Extraordinary Story of the Book that Defined the World. John Murray, London, 2005
‘to the English speaking and English reading public’; ‘read books and make extracts for The Philological Society’s New English Dictionary’ ‘Dr Murray, Mill Hill, Middlesex, N.W.’ April 1879 Appeal, OED.com
‘a1548 Hall Chron., Hen. IV. (1550) 32b, Duryng whiche sickenes as Auctors write he caused his crowne to be set on the pillowe at his beddes heade’ William Chester Minor, OED.com
‘It’s constantly moving. It’s fascinating’; ‘It’s rather nice’ John Simpson, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘There’s an excitement about the cries and whispers and the solaces’ Stephen Fry, Fry’s Planet Word, 2011
‘Books are not absolutely dead things’ John Milton, Areopagitica, Standard Publications, Inc., July 2008
‘was the first to have put together a collection of books’ Strabo, quoted by Barbara Krasner-Khait in ‘Survivor: The History of the Library’, History magazine, October/November 2001
‘During Lent’ Barbara Krasner-Khait, ‘Survivor: The History of the Library’, History magazine, October/November 2001
‘I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library’ Bodleian Library oath.
‘some of those books so taken out by the Reformers were burnt’ Anthony Wood, as quoted in ‘The History of The Bodleian’, bodleian.ox.ac.uk
‘set up my Staffe at the Librarie dore in Oxon’ Thomas Bodley, as quoted by Jane Curran in ‘Looking back on Sir Thomas Bodley’, BBC Oxford, June 2009
‘We have staff whose job it is to keep stuff safe’ Richard Ovenden, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘The politicians of today and tomorrow are communicating with their friends’ Richard Ovenden, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘It’s always been part of what we see as “serving the whole republic of the learned” ’ Richard Ovenden, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Only he who has longed as I did for Saturdays to come’ Andrew Carnegie, quoted in The New York Times obituary, 12 August 1919
‘I choose free libraries as the best agencies for improving the’ Andrew Carnegie, as quoted in ‘The Andrew Carnegie Story’, carnegiebirthplace.com
‘Make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, make ’em wait’ Wilkie Collins as quoted by GW Dahlquist in ‘Make ’em laugh, make ’em cry, make ’em wait’, Guardian, 6 January 2007
‘Is Little Nell dead?’ Robert M.C. Jeffrey, Discovering Tong: Its History, Myths and Curiosities, Robert Jeffrey, April 2007
‘I’m a great goose to have given way so, but I couldn’t help it’ Lord Jeffrey, as quoted by Hattie Tyng Griswold, The Lives of Great Authors, A.C. McClurg and Company, Chicago, 1902
‘My taste is for the sensational novel’ G. K. Chesterton, The Spice of Life and Other Essays, Darwen Finlayson, 1964
‘I am an author’ Jakucho Setouchi, quoted by Dana Goodyear, ‘Letter from Japan, “I ♥ Novels” ’, The New Yorker, 22 December 2008
‘The book revolution which from the Renaissance on’ John Updike, BookExpo America, 2006
‘Print is where words go to die’ Jeff Jarvis, ‘Books will disappear. Print is where words go to die’, Guardian, 5 June 2006
‘One thing we’ve learned in the history of books’ Professor Robert Darnton, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘I’m very attached to books and to manuscripts’ ibid.
‘bring back that real book smell you miss so much’ Smellofbooks.com
‘So we’re taking in history through the ear as well as through the eye’ Professor Robert Darnton, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘atomic priesthood’ Thomas A. Sebeok, ‘Technical Report’ prepared for Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation Battelle Memorial Institute, April 1984
‘People change, culture changes’ John Lomberg, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘The other thing that seems to be universal is the notion of a storyboard’ John Lomberg, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
Chapter 5
‘True Wit is Nature to advantage dress’d,’ Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism, Yale University Press, 1961
‘What, old dad dead?’ Cyril Tourneur, The Revenger’s Tragedy, Nick Hern Books, 1996
‘Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw and resolve into a dew!’ William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1:2, 129–130, Penguin Classics, 2007
‘One might have expected natural selection’ Professor Steven Pinker, Toward a Consilient Study of Literature, Philosophy and Literature, volume 31, Number 1, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007
‘When you talk about it, you think about it in the back of your head’ Ernie Dingo, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘In the time before time began Bunjil’ ‘The Gariwerd Creation Story’ pamphlet
‘It’s both a rhyme and rhythm, and the rhythm is the heartbeat’ Ernie Dingo, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways, who was driven’ Richmond Lattimore, The Odyssey of Homer, Harper Collins, 1965, reissued by HarperPerennial 1991, book I, lines 1–10, p. 27
‘So they sang, in sweet utterance, and the heart within me desired to listen’ ibid., book XII, lines 192–3, p. 190
‘Sing, Goddess, Achilles’ rage’ Professor Stanley Lombardo, The Iliad, Hackett Publishing Company, 1997, book I, lines 1–6
‘in which the whole plot is done backwards and the story winds up in futility and unhappiness’ Professor William Foster-Harris, The Basic Patterns of Plot, University of Oklahoma Press, new edition,1981
‘Plots of the body’; ‘plots of the mind’ Ronald Tobias, 20 Master Plots and How to Build Them, Walking Stick Press, March 2003
‘Nobody knows anything’ William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade, Futura Publications, 1990
‘Nobody – not now, not ever – knows the least goddamn thing about what is or isn’t going to work at the box office’ ibid.
‘Writing is finally about one thing: going into a room alone and doing it’ William Goldman, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘I was walking on 47th Street in New York – the diamond district’ ibid.
‘Is it safe?’ William Goldman, Marathon Man, Paramount Pictures, 1976
‘There’s no logic to it’ William Goldman, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘disappeared off with the Indians’ ibid.
‘But who knows, if we’d had McQueen, if it would have been different’ ibid.
‘When I tried to sell the movie’ ibid.
‘I’m gonna say something stupid’ ibid.
‘just to let themselves go and swim into it’ ibid.
‘I didn’t know Joyce, I didn’t know his wife Nora’ David Norris, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Few writers have had more grace and splendour in the way they write’ ibid.
‘ “Good day’s work, Joyce?” said Budgen’ ibid.
‘Every kind of Dublin saying, like “the sock whiskey” for sore legs, for instance, is in it’ ibid.
‘Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish’ James Joyce, Ulysses, Penguin Classics, new edition, 2000
‘My soul frets in the shadow of his language’ James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Wordsworth Editions Ltd, new edition, May 1992
‘I have no language now, Sheila’ David Norris, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘We tend to be a bit subversive’ ibid.
‘I would say the greatness of Yeats’ Declan Kiberd, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘And for me that’s the magnificence of Yeats’ ibid.
‘We wouldn’t be here today in a Senate of an independent Ireland’ ibid.
‘I have met them at close of day’ W.B. Yeats, Easter, 1916 – WB Yeats Selected Poems, Penguin Classics, reissued 2000
‘Sure, but you have to tell us a story in return’ Declan Kiberd, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘In the last ditch, all we can do is sing’ Samuel Becket as quoted by Barry McGovern, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Absolutely terrifying … Apart from it being so famous’ Simon Russell Beale, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘I get the sense that it was a radical exploration of a single human soul’ ibid.
‘It really does yield extraordinary riches’ ibid.
‘Utterly terrifying, poleaxing with fear’ David Tennant, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘I saw him at that very formative age’ ibid.
‘like keeping goal for Scotland’ ibid.
‘And you think, please Lord, let me just remember the lines’ ibid.
‘I can be bounded in a nutshell’ William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2:2, 254–6, Penguin Classics, new edition, January 2007
‘You just get the sense that he hasn’t slept for days’ David Tennant, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘honey-heavy dew of slumber’ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 1:1, 230, Wordsworth Editions, 1992
‘sore labour’s bath’ William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 2:2, 35–6, Penguin Classics, new edition, 2007
‘Alas poor Yorick, I knew him’ William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 5:1, 185, Penguin Classics, new edition, 2007
‘I think the Yorick moment is much more specific’ David Tennant, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘The first few performances holding a real human head’ ibid.
‘like it was some big oak tree’ Mark Rylance, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘ “It’s you who are alive now.” ’ ibid.
‘In Pittsburgh there was a little old lady’ ibid.
‘Till then, sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise’ William Shakespeare, Hamlet 1:2, 256–7, Penguin Classics, new edition, January 2007
‘I remember performing the play out at Broadmoor special hospital’ Mark Rylance, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘To be, or not to be, that is the question’ William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:1, 56–88 Penguin Classics, new edition, January 2007
‘I think poetry is to be distinguished always from prose.’ Christopher Ricks and Stephen Fry, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone’ W. H. Auden, ‘Funeral Blues’,Collected Poems, Faber & Faber, Copyright © 1976, 1991, 2007 The Estate of W. H. Auden
‘Tragically in my life, in every film I’ve ever done’ Richard Curtis, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Every day I think of that line from “The Boxer’ ibid.
‘If you pick up a poem for the first time you have to piece it together’ ibid.
‘I think there was a six-month period in which I understood it’ ibid.
‘music is auditory cheesecake’ Professor Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Penguin Allen Lane, 1998
‘A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play’ Mars, D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, 1965
‘Now hands that do dishes …with mild green Fairy Liquid’ Fairy Liquid advertising campaign, 1961
‘Just do it’ Nike, Wieden and Kennedy, 1988
‘Most excellent and proved Dentifrice’ London Gazette, 1660, quoted by Gillian Dyer, Advertising as Communication, Routledge, new edition, 1982
‘Promise, large Promise, is the soul of an Advertisement’ Dr Samuel Johnson, The Idler, The Universals Chronicle, 1759 edition
‘It won’t be long till Leo Burnett is selling apples’ quoted in The Apple Story, leoburnett.co.in
‘They’re GR-R-R-E-A-T’ Kellogg’s Frosties advertising campaign, Leo Burnett, 1952
‘Words are tremendously important in advertising’ Don Bowen, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘We pluck the lemon; you get the plums’ Volkswagen advertising campaign, Doyle Dane Bernbach, 1960
‘We’re only Number 2. We try harder’ Avis advertising campaign, Doyle Dane Bernbach, 1962
‘Probably the best lager in the world’ Carlsberg advertising campaign, Saatchi & Saatchi, 1973
‘Refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach’ Heineken advertising campaign, Collett Dickenson Pearce & Partners, 1974
‘Don’t just book it, Thomas Cook it’ Thomas Cook advertising campaign, Wells, Rich, Greene, 1984
‘English is a particularly good language for being able to play gags’ Don Bowen, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Don’t forget the Fruit Gums, Mum’ Rowntree’s Fruit Gums advertising campaign, 1958
‘Beanz Means Heinz’ Heinz advertising campaign, Young & Rubicam, 1967
‘All because the lady loves Milk Tray’ Cadbury’s advertising campaign, Leo Burnett, 1968
‘Opal Fruits! Made to make your mouth water’ Mars advertising campaign, c.1970
‘For Mash get Smash!’ Smash advertising campaign, Boase Massimi Pollitt, 1974
‘Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet’ Hamlet advertising campaign, Collett Dickenson Pearce & Partners, 1960
‘The end line has got to resonate with people’ Don Bowen, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Now the laborers and cablers and council-motion tablers were just passing by’ McDonald’s, Leo Burnett, 2009
‘I think there will always be good stories to tell’ Don Bowen, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘Unless your advertising contains a big idea it will pass like a ship in the night’ David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, Prion Books, 1995
‘In Great Britain, there are twelve million households’ David Ogilvy, The Theory and Practice of Selling the Aga Cooker, issued by Aga Heat Limited, June 1935
‘no credentials, no clients and only $6,000 in the bank’ David Ogilvy, An Autobiography, John Wiley & Sons; Revised Ed edition, February 1997
‘Did it make me gasp when I first saw it?’ David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, Prion Books, 1995
‘The Man in the Hathaway shirt’ C. F. Hathaway, Ogilvy and Mather, 1951
‘At sixty miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock’ Rolls Royce advertising campaign, Ogilvy & Mather, 1958
‘Only Dove is one-quarter cleansing cream’ Dove advertising campaign, Ogilvy & Mather,
‘The consumer is not a moron’ David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, Prion Books, 1995
‘Being edited by Ogilvy was like being operated on by a great surgeon’ Kenneth Roman, The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009
‘I do not regard advertising as entertainment or art form’ David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising, Prion Books, 1995
‘David Ogilvy 1911 – Great brands live for ever’ Leo Burnett, 1999
‘A lot of communication has nothing to do with the words’ President Clinton, The Art of Oratory, BBC News, April 2009
‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!’ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 3:2, 73, Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1992
‘To be or not to be’ Hamlet, 3:1, 56, Penguin Classics, 2007
‘Out, damn spot’ William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5:1, 35, Penguin Classics, 2007
‘Brutus is an honourable man’ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 3:2, 87, Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1992
‘Words paint pictures; words draw our imagination’ The Reverend Jesse Jackson as quoted in The Art of Oratory, BBC News, April 2009
‘It is this fate, I solemnly assure you, that I dread for you’ Demosthenes, translated by Arthur Wallace Pickard in The Public Orations of Demosthenes, Volume I, The Echo Library, January 2008
‘Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this’ Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address, Penguin, August 2009
‘I am tired of fighting. Our Chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead’ Kent Nerburn, Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy, HarperOne, 2006
‘We shall not flag or fail’ Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, 4 June 1940, as quoted in David Cannadine (
ed.), Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Great Speeches, Penguin Classics, 2007
‘He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle’ Edward R. Murrow, CBS broadcast, 30 November 1954, quoted in David Cannadine (ed.), Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Great Speeches, Penguin Classics, 2007
‘that branch of the art of lying which consists in very nearly deceiving your friends without quite deceiving your enemies’ Francis Cornford, quoted by Michael Balfour in Propaganda in War, 1939–45: Organizations, Policies and Publics in Britain and Germany, Routledge, 1979
‘You know what “morale” is, don’t you?’ Graham Greene, John Dighton, Angus MacPhail, Diana Morgan, Went the Day Well?, Ealing Studios, 1942
‘It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words’ George Orwell, 1984, Penguin, 2008
‘In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible’ ibid.
‘partly to improve his French’; ‘and it was an ideology, not just a language’ Bernard Crick, George Orwell: A Life, Penguin, 2nd revised edition, 1992
‘Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past’ George Orwell, 1984, Penguin, 2008
‘That propaganda is good which leads to success’ Joseph Goebbels, quoted by Joachim C. Fest, The Face of the Third Reich, Penguin, new edition, 1995
‘Letting a hundred flowers blossom’ Roderick MacFarquhar, The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals, Praeger, 1960
‘War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength’ George Orwell, 1984, Penguin, 2008
‘Political slogans are still useful because they sum up the approach’ Don Bowen, Fry’s Planet Word, BBC 2011
‘The most brilliant propagandist technique’ Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, Jaico Publishing House, 37th edition, 2007
Acknowledgements
Planet Word is a companion work to the BBC series Fry’s Planet Word. Without Stephen Fry, none of it would have happened. His passion, erudition, wit and curiosity inform every page of the book. Thank you, Stephen. My special appreciation goes to Margaret Magnusson and Anna Magnusson, who helped beyond measure in making sure the words were put down on paper. Laura Herring and Louise Moore at Penguin shaped and edited the book, and Anthony Goff smoothed the whole process.
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