Amorous or Loving?: The Highly Peculiar Tale of English and the English

How did a marginal dialect spoken in the late ninth century by 200,000 people become the world’s language spoken by 1.6 billion people today?In Amorous or Loving? – The Highly Peculiar Tale of English and the English, Sir Rupert Gavin charts the unique evolution of our language into the resulting hodge-podge that is now the lingua franca of the world. He argues that English is ideal as the global language, not just by accident of history, but by fundamental construction and constitution. Further, he examines how all of this was determined not just by our unique language, but also our geography, our weather, our religion, the extraordinary status of London, and by a handful of inspirational figures – some well-known and some hardly known today at all.

Utterly brilliant! A fascinating deep dive into the history of the English language and all its speakers. Deeply researched and full of extraordinary insights.

Arthur Smith



Exuberant, romantic but packed with forgotten or overlooked facts, Gavin’s book is a celebration of the miracle that is the English language and the history and national temper out of which it grew. It inspires us to value both in a way that Dickens would have understood and relished.

Simon Callow

A highly entertaining, richly personal and extremely loving look at the history of England. Fabulous.

Lucy Worsley

A tour de force! A fascinating journey through what has made the English and their language unique. Full of unexpected discoveries.

Antonia Fraser 

How did a marginal dialect spoken in the late ninth century by 200,000 people become the world’s language spoken by 1.6 billion people today?In Amorous or Loving? – The Highly Peculiar Tale of English and the English, Sir Rupert Gavin charts the unique evolution of our language into the resulting hodge-podge that is now the lingua franca of the world. He argues that English is ideal as the global language, not just by accident of history, but by fundamental construction and constitution. Further, he examines how all of this was determined not just by our unique language, but also our geography, our weather, our religion, the extraordinary status of London, and by a handful of inspirational figures – some well-known and some hardly known today at all.

• | Author: Sir Rupert Gavin
• | Publisher: Unicorn Publishing Group
• | Publication Date: May 07, 2025
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Hardback
• | ISBN-13: 9781917458085
• | ISBN-10: 1917458088