The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language

by Melvyn Bragg

In its early years on the stage as an independent country the United States was lucky in many of its leading men. President Jefferson, who had not only bought Louisiana, which must be a contender for the bargain of all time, immediately set up an expedition of forty-five men under the leadership of Captain Meriwether Lewis and William Clark (two more English names are hard to imagine). They were to find a navigable river route to the west coast. The Louisiana Purchase was itself enough to put Jefferson in the chronicles of fame in his new country; the immediate setting up of the expedition was a seizing of the day which only the finest politicians seem able to do. But for this story, for the adventure of English, Jefferson’s genius was to insist that the explorers wrote daily journals. They kept their word. The result is a glorious introduction to the often fantastical new worlds which English discovered. To meet these new experiences English invented and stole wholesale.