Alphabetical

How every letter tells a story

Michael Rosen, John Murray, 431 pages, hardback, £16.99

Billed as “the book that he always wanted to write”, Alphabetical is a romp through the alphabet by popular children’s author Michael Rosen. Aimed at a more adult readership, the book asks how we fixed upon our 26 letters in the first place, what do they mean, and how did we come to write them down?

Fizzing with personal anecdotes and fascinating facts, starting with the mysterious Phoenicians and how sounds first came to be written down, Rosen races on to show how nonsense poems work, pins down the strange story of “OK”, traces our five lost letters and tackles the tyranny of spelling, among many other things.

 His heroes of the alphabet range from Edward Lear to Phyllis Pearsall (the inventor of the A-Z), and from the two scribes of Beowulf to rappers. Each chapter takes on a different subject — whether it’s codes, umlauts or the writing of dictionaries.

Rosen’s enthusiasm for letters positively leaps off the page, whether it’s the story of his life told through the typewriters he’s owned or a chapter on jokes written in a string of gags and word games.

So if you ever wondered why Hawaiian only has a thirteen-letter alphabet or why X should mark the spot, read on . . .