Cassell Dictionary of Insulting Quotations

Fülszöveg

CASSELL
l>íctionaty oj^
Jnsultiná iQuotmjons
'If only he'd wash his neck, I'd wring it.' 'She has only two expressions - joy and indigestion.' 'A man of many talents - all of them minor.' 'She has only one fault. She is insufferable.' 'If he were any dumber, he'd be a tree.'
A treasury of invective, spite and generál bad feeling, the Cassell Dictionary oflnsulting Quotations records the guilty verdicts passed on a whole host of individuals, nations and ways of life.
At its best, rudeness can be an art form, and the Cassell Dictionary of Insulting Quotations is a glorious celebration of the outpourings of its most successful practitioners. No one, it seems, is too important or successful to escape the occasional hatchet blow, and the luckless victims represented here rangé across every walk of life. Somé are national leaders, such as Ronald Reagan ('A triumph of the embalmer's art') or Margaret Thatcher ('The Immaculate Misconception'). Others include musicians ('Wagner's... Tovább

Fülszöveg

CASSELL
l>íctionaty oj^
Jnsultiná iQuotmjons
'If only he'd wash his neck, I'd wring it.' 'She has only two expressions - joy and indigestion.' 'A man of many talents - all of them minor.' 'She has only one fault. She is insufferable.' 'If he were any dumber, he'd be a tree.'
A treasury of invective, spite and generál bad feeling, the Cassell Dictionary oflnsulting Quotations records the guilty verdicts passed on a whole host of individuals, nations and ways of life.
At its best, rudeness can be an art form, and the Cassell Dictionary of Insulting Quotations is a glorious celebration of the outpourings of its most successful practitioners. No one, it seems, is too important or successful to escape the occasional hatchet blow, and the luckless victims represented here rangé across every walk of life. Somé are national leaders, such as Ronald Reagan ('A triumph of the embalmer's art') or Margaret Thatcher ('The Immaculate Misconception'). Others include musicians ('Wagner's music is better than it sounds'), writers ('Truman Capote has made lying an art. A minor art') and actors ('Zsa Zsa Gábor not only worships the Golden Calf - she barbecues it for lunch'). Sometimes entire professions and modes of life come in for the blowtorch of criticism, and the dictionary alsó records in devastating detail the less than charitable views that different countries have of each other, as, for example, the American perception of England ('England will fight to the last American') and the English opinion of America ('The national dish of America is menüs'). Virtually no individual, institution or nation, in fact, emerges from these pages unscathed.
Cruel, snide, rude and bitchy, the Cassell Dictionary of Insulting Quotations records the humán spirit at its least spiritual.
Jonathon Green is a writer, lexicographer and broadcaster, specialising in dictionaries of language and of quotations. He has compiled three oral histories of modern culture, notably the much-acclaimed Days in the Life, the story of Britain's hippié Sixties. In all, he has written more than 30 books, including the Contemporary Dictionary of Slang and the Contemporary Dictionary of Quotations. His most recent publication is Chasing the Sun: Dictionary-Makers and the Dictionaries Tbey Made, and he is currently working on the Cassell Dictionary of Slang. He lives in London. Vissza