Gervase Phinn’s Mangled English

Sometimes what we say and write can lead to a great deal of misunderstanding and unintentional humour, as bestselling author and former school inspector Gervase Phinn shows in his book 'Gervase Phinn's Mangled English', a humorous anthology of the mistakes, misprints, malapropisms and misunderstandings in the English language. It includes book requests ('Lionel Richie's Wardrobe by Cecily Lewis') and book titles (Handbook for the Limbless); people's names (Nora Bone); proverbs ('If he died with a face like that, nobody would wash the corpse'); spoonerisms ('The British Broadcorping Castration'); classroom howlers ('A fibula is a small lie'); malapropisms ('She's got a congenial disease') and euphemisms ('I'm off to shed a tear for Nelson'); newspaper misprints ('New research into causes of dysexlia'); and epitaphs ('He died in peace. His wife died first').