The aim of this audiobook is entertainment - and surprise - but there will be a fair bit of erudition and incidental education along the way. We discover the oldest words, the newest, the longest, the shortest, the most frequently used, the costliest (yes, words can come with a price attached), the funniest, the most fatal, the most unusual...from the words Shakespeare gave us to the latest in sexting, the best and the worst, the most amusing and amazing words are here.

Full of puns, palindromes, pangrams, acrostics, malaprops, famous (and infamous) last words and featuring extracts recorded live at his 2015 Edinburgh Fringe show, in Word Play, Gyles Brandreth leads us through an A - Z and a Z - A of the wonderful world of words.