Sunday Telegraph from London, Greater London, England • 52

12 REVIEW arts.telegraph.co.uk The Sunday Telegraph DECEMBER 7 2003 Christmas Books Simply the last word in dictionaries Dictionaries of everything from idiocy to music feature in Nicholas Bagnall's choice of reference books The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs ed by Jennifer Speake Oxford, IT'S GOOD to see a new edition of this treasury of homespun wisdom which first appeared 20 years ago and now includes some fresh examples hitherto overlooked, such as the ones about bad things coming in threes and there being more than one way to skin a cat, though both these apparently date from Victorian times. It certainly looks as though the oldest proverbs are the best. Everyone knows that the higher the monkey climbs the more he shows his tail, but not many of us know that Wyclif put it better in 1395 filth of her folly appeareth more, as the filth of the hind parts of an ape appeareth more Or that "Fish always stinks from the head downwards" was borrowed in the 16th century from the ancient Greeks. (How shall I put it? there's many a good tune played on an old fiddle.) The Oxford Dictionary of Nicknames by Andrew Delahunty Oxford, £15:99 THIS NEW dictionary from Oxford won't say why Clarkes are called Nobby or which Shanks had that pony, but you'll learn about the Shanks who managed Liverpool FC (Bill Shankly) and who the original Nosey Parker was (the great Archbishop Matthew Parker, who else?) and the original Fair Maid of Kent and the common nickname for tennis star Boris Becker (Bonking Boris, according to some). There are some inadvertent omissions.

We have the Torygraph for the DT, but the Daily Liar (an old name for the Mail) is surprisingly absent. Some nicknames sound rather contrived or schoolmasterly, such as the Fathers of this and that, others perhaps too obvious, like The Blind Poet, who had to be Milton if it wasn't Homer. We look for wit in a good nickname, like the one for Joan Bakewell (she's in the index, if you've forgotten it). And they don't need to be insulting, though I'm perfectly happy with Copper Nose for Oliver Cromwell. The Daily Telegraph A to of Almost Everything: A Compendium of General Knowledge by Trevor Montague Little, Brown, £25 I ALREADY have my Whitaker's and Hutchinson Almanacs and my trusty Pears Cyclopedia, but the almanacs are annuals and Pears is a very small thing compared with this all-purpose monster, now updated.

The only problem is where to find what you want. I looked in vain for the population of Dorking, and I dare say it's in there somewhere, but then any gazetteer will tell you that; Masterminder Trevor Montague's magnum opus is really best enjoyed by idle browsers who like picking up nuggets. And there's nowhere else I can think of where you can discover without too much trouble who played that grumpy ARP warden in Dad's Army, the date of the Battle of Aegospotami and the exact area, in square miles, of the Adriatic Sea. The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland by Steve Roud Penguin, £25 THE SURPRISING thing about superstitions, as this big new collection of them shows, is how many of them are comparatively recent, despite the popular idea that they date from the credulous Dark Ages. The belief that fingernails should be cut only on certain days is exceptional for having already been current in the fourth century.

And though others must admittedly be even older Friday was the day of the Crucifixion, for example, and 13 the number present at the Last Supper they persist Telegraph Books Direct The ideal companion for all garden lovers THE The Daily Telegrapit GOOD GARDENS GUIDE 2004 KING KATHERINT LA The Good Gardens Guide 2004 Edited by Peter King and Katherine Lambert "I never go anywhere without it" It includes: Alan Titchmarsh region details on how "My absolute bible" Tiffany Daneff, Gardening Editor, The Daily Telegraph This is the essential independent reference book for all garden visitors and enthusiasts. It selects gardens of real merit, detailing their main characteristics and qualities. This 15th edition has a plus special features focus on modern gardens, on current gardening issues. To order call 0870 155 Post coupon to Telegraph Books Estate, Brecon, Powys LD3 8LA. Monday to Friday and 9am-5pm Visit our website Please order by December 12 to among people who have no idea why they hold them.

Often Steve Roud admits he can hardly guess the reasons, but then superstition is definition irrational. Cats prompt many beliefs which can be accounted for only by their reluctance to fall in with our wishes, while the omniscience of bees, which are said to leave the hive if a family quarrels, can only be assumed from their apparently high IQ. Other superstitions are pretty well inexplicable. Why ever did people cover mirrors when a thunderstorm was brewing? The Encyclopedia of Ireland ed by Brian Lalor Gill Macmillan, £50 THIS beautiful book, though weighty, is easy to handle with its straight alphabetical arrangement (though there's a subject index at the back) and ample cross-references. Its 1,200 pages are cleanly designed so that I always know where am, whether the territory is historical.

geographical, cultural or political. Inevitably one tends to look for bias in a book that covers so contentious a history, and in a single volume; but scholarly contributors from both sides of the Border have treated it with an even hand, sometimes showing enviable restraint. It's in the island's culture, though, her painters and poets and musicians, that the book is at its best (and I suppose one can say the same country). Plenty of illustrations. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music ed by Paul Du Noyer Flame Tree, £25 CLEAR coffee table.

Here comes the big one wide-page format, highly glazed paper, frantic typography and illustrations all over the place. Useless, 1 I thought. Covers the globe. Too much and yet too little. But then I warmed to it; as Paul Du Noyer's The National Library, Prague, in 'The Most Beautiful Libraries of the World', ed by Guillaume de Laubier and Jacques Bosser (Thames Hudson, £39-95) introduction points out, we hear music everywhere whether willingly or not, so let's begin to learn about it and enjoy it.

The book is not really meant for freaks (though they'll read it all the same). You may not want it for its classical section, which takes 25 of its 440 pages anyway, you only? may be a bit confused at first by reading (for example) that "the rockabilly style is an eclectic hybrid of hillbilly and but a little persistence and some work on the index could begin to reward you. Classical Music Encyclopedia ed by Stanley Sadie Flame Tree, £20 THIS HANDSOME book, which at first glance invites comparison with Michael Kennedy's single-volume Oxford Dictionary of Music, turns out to be a different animal altogether, arranged by period rather than alphabetically, and assuming a keen but quite ignorant readership, with essays on the broader cultural background of the music being discussed; the whole approach is pleasantly discursive. There are "recommended recordings" after many entries. A foreword by Vladimir Ashkenazy expresses his understandable impatience with people who "insist on calling classical music elitist" when it is available to everyone in a way that a was impossible in earlier ages.

A Dictionary of Idiocy by Stephen Bayley Gibson Square, IF THIS is not exactly a reference book, then nor was Flaubert's Dictionnaire des newly translated here in an appendix, which gave the opinionated Stephen Bayley his inspiration. Take three scullery maids There are fewer television chefs among this season's best cookbooks, according to Gina Thomas Anyway, the result isn't at all like that masterly catalogue of contemporary Flaubert's famous glossary listed, with tongue-in-cheek approval, the bourgeois platitudes of his day; Mr Bayley takes current trends and institutions in alphabetical order and attacks them head-on, showing a fine contempt for accountants, for example, for abstract art, wine-buffs and the consumer society. He gives the origin of the word has a longish essay on Japanese culture, cites John Evelyn's opinion that eating lettuce was an aid to chastity, and shows off a great deal. He is particularly interested in the history of four-letter words and includes a Rabelaisian list of terms for the private parts. My eyelids drooped sometimes, but then he'd me awake shouting "attention moi!" as he chased yet another hare.

the most popular cuisine, to Uganda, The secret of Delia Smith's sucand from Trinidad to Japan. cess is that her cooking is accessible to all. Following her Vegetable CollecBeef, mutton, rabbit, if you wish tion, BBC Books have produced four Lobsters or prawns, or new compilations of her recipes, kind of fish Chocolate, Fish, Soup and Chicken Are fit to make a CURRY. 'Tis, (BBC, £9-99), the idea being that when done, familiar dishes can be more easily A dish for emperors to feed upon. located and new offerings discovThus wrote Thackeray who had trav- ered.

These handsome volumes will elled in India. Madhur Jaffrey's highly be gratefully received by those who instructive compilation of recipes from are reassured by the down-to-earth all over the world transports you into efficiency that Delia Smith's critics the culture of kebabs, vindaloos, dals so unjustly look down on. and chutnies. You can almost taste the When Jessica Mitford was asked spices as you immerse yourself in this to contribute a recipe, for a cookery splendid tome. book produced Parent and of all abilities will find Leith's Teacher's Association of her chilTechniques Bible (Bloomsbury, £35) a drens' school, she was brief to the solid fallback when puzzling over point of bluntness.

"Take a goose recipes by less considerate authors. It and roast it till done" was all the contains a rundown utensils, ingre- wisdom she deigned to impart, as if dients and basic methods for anything to demonstrate her lack of interest from chopping an onion to filleting in such pedestrian matters. as food. fish. A glossary explains what to do Her sister, the Duchess Devonwhen told to tammy (remove impuri- shire, includes this and other snipties by.

squeezing a sauce through pets of Mitfordiana in The Chatsmuslin) or render (melt solid fat in the worth Cookery Book (Frances oven). The recipes are designed to Lincoln, £9-99). Although she conexemplify a particular technique, and fesses that she has not cooked since in the manner of instruction man- the war, the Duchess has, together uals for electrical appliances they with her chefs, put together a collecinform you where you might have tion of family favourites for wrong if the collapses or those who might wish to recreate gone the is cloudy. the culinary delights of Chatsworth It has become part of the business in their own kitchen. for restaurant chefs to market them- But social historians and devotees selves with books for the home cook.

of the Mitford world might find this But the transition from the profes- 'The Fish Stall', by William Kidd, from 'Festive Feasts' (British Museum, volume more rewarding than cooks. sional to the domestic kitchen is not £14-99), by Michelle Berriedale-Johnson, a cookbook full of historical lore Like the world Deborah Devonshire always successful, as the often erratic describes so evocatively in her prefquantities in the earlier River Those who love Italian food will Gordon Ramsay's Secrets (Qua- ace and notes, these recipes or Cook Books showed. Rose Gray and enjoy Tessa Kiros' Twelve: A Tuscan drille, £25) is a model of clarity. receipts, as she prefers to call them Ruth Rogers' latest offering, River Cook Book (Murdoch Books, £25). It Arranged according to types of food, smack of times long gone by, Cook Book Easy (Ebury Press, takes you through the year with sea- the dishes aim to broaden the skills when the cook was assisted by a first £20), has the same emphasis on ingre- sonal dishes from the fallow winter of the reader.

While the mackerel and second kitchen maid, a vegetadients. It is an attempt to make their months, when bean stews and and confit potato in aubergine cups ble maid, two or three scullery wonderfully distinctive Italianate style boiled meats are the staple food, or pumpkin and amaretti ravioli are maids, two stillroom maids and a more accessible. However, River to the rich pickings of spring and directed at more sophisticated ama- dairy maid: a far cry from the condicooking is not as easy as it is made summer and back to wintry roasts teurs there are many suggestions tions under which most of us toil to sound. and cakes. for the less advanced.

away at the stove. The Oxford Dictionary of English ed by Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson Oxford, £35 OXFORD says it has strict rules for deciding what new words to include, but the ODE, an update of the 1998 New Oxford, offers another 3,000, including some could do without, such as pharming (producing GM crops for pharmaceutical use, geddit?) and sampladelic (of a kind of hi-tech dance music). Some pleasing phrases newly recorded, such as chew the scenery and data smog. The Chambers Dictionary Chambers, £30 THE LATEST Chambers claims "10,000 new words and meanings" since its last edition of five years ago and has had to increase its size, though it doesn't carry the proper names and usage guidance that weigh down the ODE. Both pharming and data smog are here, and Chambers alone has the smartalec dataveillance which I rather hope not to see in the next edition.

But I do like disco biscuit the ODE) for an Ecstasy tablet. The Penguin English Dictionary ed by Robert Allen Penguin, SPOTTING new words can be slightly depressing. It's only three years since the excellent Penguin dictionary first appeared, but it has acquired "hundreds of new words, jargon and buzzwords" which might be good news except that "every aspect of technological as its editor says, "seems to entail the vocabulary of and he instances cyberstalking, identity theft and shoulder surfing (sneaking behind someone as they punch in their PIN number). All this and bioterrorism too. TWO NEWS items make grim reading for food lovers in this country.

This year we learnt that eat more ready-made meals than any nation other than America. Publishers also report a decline in cookbook sales. We have, it seems, tired of celebrity chefs on television and the boom they engendered in the late Nineties has been likened to the dot.com bubble. But you would not think it when you visit your local bookshop. Once again new titles abound covering all aspects of culinaria from the mundane to the exotic.

There is, however, no clear winner among this year's crop, the one exception being a slim volume published posthumously. In many ways Elizabeth David's Christmas (Penguin, £14,99) is akin to the discovery of an unknown painting by an old master. She had long intended to publish a book of Christmas recipes to make what she describes as grisly orgy of spending and cooking and anxiety" easier to bear by simplifying and reducing the labour involved. But it was not until after her death that her editor and friend Jill Norman came across a Christmas file with enough recipes and cuttings to compile this book, which will delight Elizabeth David's many admirers. David had even written an introduction in which she gives vent to her dislike of "today's enforced Recipes for staples such as stuffings for turkey or variations on mincement are interspersed with less traditional fare, and with literary quotations and other seasonal ephemera.

The book combines good taste with erudition and practicality. Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible (Ebury Press, £25) is a mine of information about the way Indian cooking has colonised the world from Britain, where it has become to get there, opening times and entrance charges Details on season opening times, refreshments and picnicking, toilet facilities, wheelchair access, availability and more Two star grading system identifying the most exceptional gardens of websites for gardens in the guide £12.99 (paperback) TEL356 7222 Fax 0870 155 7225. Direct, Units 5 6, Industrial Lines are open 9am-7pm weekends. www.telegraphbooksdirect.co.uk/xmas ensure delivery for Christmas..