A hilarious tour of the state of our mother tongue from the people who brought you Am I Alone In Thinking.. .? Sign Language is a collection the most inappropriate confusing poorly translated & mind-bogglingly bizarre signs from around the world. Few things amuse & appal Telegraph readers as much as the abuse misuse mistranslation & outright mangling of the English language. So for the past three years the Telegraph has run a weekly feature inviting members of the public to send in photographs of menus health & safety warnings road signs adverts headlines & personals columns
- anything in which the language has gone egregiously hilariously & usually unintentionally wrong. Entitled Sign Language the published selection of the very best images has become one of the newspapers most popular features attracting over 300 000 online visitors every week & attracting thousands of submissions from around the world. Now we present the very best of Sign Language
- both seen & unseen
- & offer a timely warning about the imperilled state of modern English.


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Would you take your toothache to a dentist called Wong Kwee Mau? Dine out at Cafe Buck Butt? Or book a cruise with Turismo Titanic? No? Perhaps you prefer to travel with Git Holidays then...? These are just a few of the many baffling alarming & unwittingly amusing signs spotted by readers of the Telegraph whilst trotting the globe. Others range from the bizarre
- accomodation facilities in a pan of fresh
- to the surprisingly honest
- Chancy Investments
- or in the case of menus the stomach-churningly revolting: anyone for bottom sauce with yogurt? & of course no collection of funny signs would be complete without a healthy dose of smut & innuendo.



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You are a wronged woman & shall have justice. Do not bring police. If you do all will be in vain. Your unknown friend. When a beautiful young woman is sent a letter inviting her to a sinister assignation she immediately seeks the advice of the consulting detective Sherlock Holmes. For this is not the first mysterious item Mary Marston has received in the post. Every year for the last six years an anonymous benefactor has sent her a large lustrous pearl. Now it appears the sender of the pearls would like to meet her to right a wrong. But when Sherlock Holmes & his faithful sidekick Watson aiding Miss Marston attend the assignation they embark on a dark & mysterious adventure involving a one-legged ruffian some hidden treasure deadly poison darts & a thrilling race along the River Thames. ...

A dense yellow miasma swirls in the streets of London as Sherlock Holmes & Dr Watson accompany a beautiful young woman to a sinister assignation. For Mary Marston has received several large pearls
- one a year for the last six years
- & now a mystery letter telling her she is a wronged woman. If she would seek justice she is to meet her unknown benefactor bringing with her two companions. But unbeknownst to them all others stalk Londons fog-enshrouded streets: a one-legged ruffian with revenge on his mind --and his companion who places no value on human life...

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Gripping & ingeniously plotted this Sherlock Holmes novel is also an important document of late-Victorian imperialism. Arthur Conan Doyle's second Sherlock Holmes novel is both a detective story & an imperial romance. Ostensibly the story of Mary Morstan a beautiful young woman enlisting the help of Holmes to find her vanished father & solve the mystery of her receipt of a perfect pearl on the same date each year it gradually uncovers a tale of treachery & human greed. The action audaciously ranges from penal settlements on the Andaman Islands to the suburban comfort of South London & from the opium-fuelled violence of Agra Fort during the Indian ' Mutiny' to the cocaine-induced contemplation of Holmes' own Baker Street. This edition places Doyle's tale in the cultural political & social contexts of late nineteenth-century colonialism & imperialism. The appendices provide a wealth of relevant extracts from hard-to-find sources ranging from official reports to memoirs & newspaper editorials to anthropological studies. ...

Every time we choose a route to work decide whether to go on a second date or set aside money for a rainy day we are making a prediction about the future. Yet from the financial crisis to ecological disasters we routinely fail to foresee hugely significant events often at great cost to society. In The Signal & the Noise" the " New York Times" political forecaster Nate Silver who accurately predicted the results of every single state in the 2012 US election reveals how we can all develop better foresight in an uncertain world. From the stock market to the poker table from earthquakes to the economy he takes us on an enthralling insider's tour of the high-stakes world of forecasting showing how we can use information in a smarter way amid a noise of data
- & make better predictions in our own lives."
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There's never a dull moment in this entertaining collection of experiences as Geoff Body & Bill Parker present often hilarious highlights from the careers of railwaymen around Britain over the last fifty years. Featuring daring robberies royal visits lost passengers bomb scares coffins circus trains & ladies of the night it chronicles both successes & disasters with accounts of moving a farm & a circus 245 miles of marooned railway footplate adventures animal capers & many equally fascinating subjects. Geoff Body & Bill Parker both enjoyed long careers on the railways & they have brought together this assortment of memories from all parts of the country. Signal Box Coming Up Sir!" is an entertaining & instructive journey for anyone with an interest in life on the railways." ...

When in 1798 Richard Bolitho hoists his broad pendant as commodore of a small squadron & prepares to re-enter the Mediterranean he is soon made aware of his responsibility. There are rumours of a massive French armada & of the latest type of artillery
- & Bolithos orders are to seek out the enemy & to discover the intentions of his growing force. Without any British bases in the Mediterranean & unable to show favour to old friends Bolitho is well aware that there are others within his ships who are no less dangerous than the enemy
- & during the weeks & months in which the squadron faces the hazards of the weather & French broadsides alike Bolitho knows that far more than his own future is at stake. A fleet even a nation could depend on his decisions & when he places his squadron between the Nile & the power of France he must accept the price of the challenge.

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In Signalmans Twilight Adrian continues the story of his railway life in rural West Berkshire. Adrian revelled in the gentle old-world atmosphere & seized every opportunity on duty & off to talk to the older railwaymen many of whom had begun their careers on the GWR in 1919
- 21 some of whom had served in the trenches with the Wiltshire Regiment in 1916
- 18 & others of whom had worked for the Midland & South Western Junction Railway in 1913 on to 1921 when we took over the Great Western as they put it. He visited other signal boxes rode the footplates of goods trains & express trains alike. Signalmans Twilight recalls the openness of the railway. Adrian could go wherever he liked on the railway & was welcomed
- even riding in the Track Testing Car behind Sudeley Castle at 97 mph. The book recalls the skill & commitment of the railwaymen which was not undermined by their allowing Adrian into their workplaces & onto their engines. He tells the amazing story of how Signalman Abrahams saved what would have been a fatal train crash
- just as he was about to start to demonstrate a new hymn he had learned for next Sundays service. Adrians admiration for the oldhand railwaymen knew no bounds. Then came modernisation dieselisation & station closures under Dr Beechings Axe. Adrian describes how he tried single-handedly to save Challow station only to earn a severe reprimand from high authority. The Axe fell & destroyed not only the stations of the Vale but a happy settled way of life.



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This richly illustrated study is the first consider the manifold functions & meanings of Halss distinctive handling of paint. Atkins explores the uniqueness of Halss approach to painting & the relationship of his manner to seventeenth-century aesthetics. He also investigates the economic motivations & advantages of his methods the operation of the style as a personal & workshop brand & the apparent modernity of the artists style. The book seeks to understand the multiple levels on which Halss consciously cultivated manner of painting operated for himself his pupils & assistants his clients & succeeding generations of viewers. As a result the book offers a wholly new understanding of one of the leading artists of the Dutch Golden Age & one of the most formative painters in the history of art in the Western tradition. It also provides a much needed interrogation of the interrelationships of subjectivity style authorship methods of artistic & commercial production economic consumption & art theory in early modernity. ...