David Crystal: A Time and a Place: Where English Came To Be

If you are interested in history, you visit battlefields and castles. If architecture, cathedrals and stately homes. But if your interest is in the English language, where do you go? 

David and Hilary Crystal have, over the past year, been visiting locations in England, Scotland, and Wales where something of importance happened that helped to shape our understanding of English, and in this photographically illustrated talk they present some of their findings. 

There were some unanticipated encounters. They were expecting to meet up with Anglo-Saxon kings, monks, and poets, early grammarians and lexicographers, dialect enthusiasts and phoneticians, and the many scholars and writers who shaped standard English in Britain, but they weren't expecting to make contact with the world of lead thieves and hovercrafts, or see a procession of modern minimonks. Why were they fooled into thinking there was a monument to the definite article? Or that the mystery of the contents of Shakespeare's grave would finally be revealed? And why did they encounter Elvis Presley - twice?

David Crystal is one of the world's leading experts on the history and development of the English language.