One of the books of which I’m most proud is “Just Words – a sceptic’s glossary” and that’s not just because of the pun in the title - the first word can be read to mean either “mere/only” or “fair/impartial”. Two very different senses.
Victor Klemperer (1881-1960) came to Western notice only after 1995 when his German publisher started to release the Diaries which he had kept since an early age at the start of the 20th Century; and it was several years later before UK and US audiences were able to read the English versions of I Will Bear Witness 1933-41 and I Will Bear Witness 1942-45 – let alone The Lesser Evil The Diaries of V Klemperer 1945-59. That’s some 40 years after his death!!
He was a philologist who used his experience of listening to passengers on the Dresden trams and buses to publish, in 1947, The Language of the Third Reich. It was 2000 – more than 50 years after his death – before it appeared in English and has now pride of place in the “Roll-call of Honour” which is chapter 4 of “Just Words”.
The book has now 73 pages and can boast
25 pages of definitions
all the key authors – from La Rochefoucauld and Flaubert through Pierce and Klemperer to Susan George and J Ralston Saul
It’s a quite unique compendium - and I thoroughly recommend it.
