Virtually every household has at least one dictionary, but we take dictionaries very much for granted. We talk of the dictionary, as we talk of the Bible, as if there were only one, but, in fact, dictionaries do differ. In this light-hearted and entertaining talk, Susan Purcell will consider some of the great names in dictionary-making and will show how dictionaries have changed over time.

Susan is the author of a number of children’s dictionaries and thesauruses and is co-editor of the Puzzler Crossword Solver’s Dictionary, published by Penguin. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Linguists and the author of several foreign language course books and grammar books, having begun her career as a teacher of modern languages.