Dent's Modern Tribes

Susie Dent

Did you know that . . . a soldier's biggest social blunder is called jack brew - making yourself a cuppa without making one for anyone else? That twitchers have an expression for a bird that can't be identified - LBJ (the letters stand for Little Brown Job)? Or that builders call plastering the ceiling doing Lionel Richie's dancefloor? Susie Dent does.

Ever wondered why football managers all speak the same way what a cabbie calls the Houses of Parliament or how ticket inspectors discreetly request back-up? We are surrounded by hundreds of tribes each speaking their own distinct slanguage of colourful words jokes and phrases honed through years of conversations on the battlefield in A&E backstage or at ten-thousand feet in the air.

Susie Dent has spent years interviewing hundreds of professionals hobbyists and enthusiasts and the result is an idiosyncratic phrasebook like no other. From the Freemason's handshake to the publican's banter Dent's Modern Tribes takes us on a whirlwind tour of Britain decoding its secret languages and in the process finds out what really makes us all tick.