“The Horus Heresy: Collected Visions” by Alan Merrett

384 pages, The Black Library, ISBN-13: 978-1844164240

The Horus Heresy: Collected Visions is an omnibus edition and the fifth release in a series of art books on the Horus Heresy that collects together the four original books in the Visions series: Visions of War, Visions of Darkness, Visions of Treachery and Visions of Death. These books contain both original artwork and images derived from the Horus Heresy Card Game (now defunct) in addition to previously published Horus Heresy-related magazine articles, select rulebook information, original annotations, information and even short stories. The text, along with the art, greatly expanded the background material available at the time on the Horus Heresy, outlining the whole Heresy while providing additional background on it and the wider Warhammer 40,000 Universe. The sheer amount of artwork is staggering, both in detail and scope, and while any 40K fan will recognize some of the artwork you would be hard pressed to have seen everything this contains before. If you are interested in the history of the Imperium, and the events that led to the God-Emperor of Mankind’s current state, enshrined permanently upon the Golden Throne, this will provide very fantastic visuals to accompany the lore of the Dark Millennium.

“Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World”, by Billy Bragg

464 pages, Faber & Faber, ISBN-13: 978-0571327744

Skiffle? Skiffle. Skif-fle. Just what in the hell is…“Skiffle”. Well, I’ll tell ya: it is, in essence, the English interpretation of American blues, folk and jazz music. The word itself is rather more mysterious, as the phrase “to make a skiffle” means, in the West of England, to make a hash of things, whereas in the American South it was a term for a rent party, a social event with a small charge designed to pay rent on a house. Alright, then. As should be obvious from this brief digression, modern music is a mansion with many rooms: Blues, Country, Easy Listening, Electronica, Folk, Funk, Hip-hop, Jazz, Latin, Pop, Reggae, Rhythm & Blues, Rockabilly, Rock ‘n’ Roll, Salsa, Soul…and that is just a small, small sampling of what I’m talking about. But, what about skiffle? Where does this peculiar word fit in to all of this? As all forms of music have their ardent champions, skiffle has found its most eloquent advocate in Billy Bragg, whose Roots, Radicals and Rockers: How Skiffle Changed the World seeks to educate the world at large about this oft-overlooked and misunderstood form of music.

This may seem like a vain boast, at first, given that skiffle is often derided as a moribund sub-set of an entire category (folk music) which, in turn, is all-too-frequently characterized as terminally “uncool”; Bragg himself concedes that skiffle exists “in the dead ground of British pop culture, between the end of the war and the rise of the Beatles”, having left “little tangible evidence” of its relatively brief period of popularity, so that in the popular consciousness it registers, if at all, as a footnote to the formation of the Beatles (the original Quarrymen were a skiffle group, after all) and in the recordings of Lonnie Donegan, who sold out in making novelty songs like “My Old Man’s a Dustman” just as clearly (but much less profitably) as Elvis did when he started making ever-worse movies. Furthermore, the British teenager of the day was shaped by more profound forces than skiffle music, like the baby boom, full employment (at long last) and the end of National Service. But when Bragg talks about skiffle changing the world, he’s really thinking more about its lasting musical legacy: in the book’s final chapter, “The British Are Coming”, he makes the convincing argument that “skiffle was boot camp for the British Invasion” by pointing to the origins in skiffle of – *deep breath* – Marc Bolan Jack Bruce Dave Clark Joe Cocker Roger Daltrey Wayne Fontana Ian Hunter Paul Jones John Lennon Gerry Marsden Paul McCartney Graham Nash Jimmy Page Alan Price Rod Stewart Ronnie Wood Bill Wyman...and a host of other seminal figures in the UK pop and rock scene of the 1960s and beyond.

It is clear that what appeals to Bragg is not just the music but its practitioners’ attitude and the way in which skiffle was produced: “the first music for teenagers by teenagers in our [English] cultural history”. Not surprisingly then, Bragg sees punk as the spiritual heir of skiffle: music produced at a time of austerity, which rejected the overproduced confections of the then mainstream and comprised a rough-and-ready three-chord DIY form of expression which was raucous, energetic, empowering and authentic (it also makes the unknowing case for how “cultural appropriation”, one of the modern Left’s current bugaboos, is utter bullshit; music is music, you like what you like, and it can be mixed, adapted, changed and merged to create – well, anything). So thank you Billy Bragg; it all makes sense now. I now have the context and the background to comprehend what it meant when John Lennon said “We started as a skiffle group”. All my life I have loved the Beatles and the music brought to our shores by The British Invasion. Skiffle and Lonnie Donegan were references to ghosts I had but vague impressions of, but now I have the context and the foundation for understanding what led up to the birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll and The Beatles. How did the guitar get to the front of the band? How did folk, blues, country, jazz, and traditional music become the rock and roll and popular music we know today? Why, skiffle, thank you very much…and thank you, Billy, for laying out the entire social, cultural and musical history that led to birth of modern music. Compelling and well-written, this is a musical history lesson worth digesting.

“The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories: The life stories of over 12,000 words”, edited by Glynnis Chantrell

559 pages, Oxford University Press, ISBN-13: 978-0198631217

The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories – edited by Glynnis Chantrell – describes the origins and development of thousands of core words found in the English language, complete with dates where recorded evidence of use has been found by the ongoing research for the Oxford English Dictionary. Additional word histories outside this core group are included for words with a particularly interesting story to tell and links between words are given where these enhance the picture. A key feature of the Dictionary is the inclusion of a large number of well-known idioms with dates of original use with details of how and when they came about, such as “say it with flowers”. Colorful popular beliefs are explored about words such as “posh” and “snob”, while insights are given into our social history revealed by language development, such as the connection in a Roman soldier’s mind of “salary” with “salt”. Another interesting feature is the notion of word relationships, as with the following:

• shared roots (“stare” and “starve” both from a base meaning “be rigid”) 
• common ancestry (“mongrel” related to “mingle” and “among”) 
• surprising commonality (“wage” and “wed”) 
• typical formation (“blab”, “bleat”, “chatter”, “gibber” are all imitative of sounds) 
• influence by association (“cloudscape” on the pattern of “landscape”) 
• shared word building elements (“hyperspace”, “hypersonic”, “hyperlink”)

But for all that, in reading the Dictionary one continually wonders if anyone would actually ever find this book really more useful than your average, run-of-the-mill dictionary. The chief problem as I see it are the words selected: the 12,000 entries all cover common words in the standard vocabulary, there are no phrases, no slang, no jargon and no profanity...dammit. In short, the book omits most of the words that people are really curious about. The alphabetical arrangement is not conducive to conveying information on etymological or linguistic patterns, and while there is the above-described attempt to describe derivations, these are simply lists of prefixes and suffixes under different names and formats. The entries are fairly compact, typically running from six to eight lines. They are in plain English with few abbreviations or other etymological jargon, and while this makes the information very accessible to the average reader, it also means is that each entry contains little more than one will find in the etymological notes of a good collegiate dictionary. This is a shame: Oxford Press has gloriously rich files on word histories, and while this information usually only makes it into publication in clipped and condensed form, a book that really delved into the history of words would be a joy. It would be the first time much of this research ever saw the light of day and it would provide insight into how the Oxford lexicographers make their etymological calls. Instead, we get part of a collegiate dictionary.