BY ALEXIA JAMES

Oliver Preston has been drawing cartoons for 25 years and draws weekly cartoons for Country Life Magazine. His work has been published in the Beano and the Dandy, Paris Match, The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, Punch Magazine, The Spectator and he drew regularly for The Field Magazine.

Preston has now teamed up with Hugh Kellett who studied languages at Oxford and has been playing around with words in London advertising agencies most of his life. The humorous potential of the English language, this mishmash of the tongues of our invaders, its crazy spellings, rich nuances and punny possibilities have become his abiding passion. His first book Glitzch! earned him many plaudits as a modern wit and wordsmith.

Now, with The Dictionary of Posh, Kellett turns his wordsmithery to something even more fundamental than history ⁠— to the English language itself ⁠— and, more precisely, the revelation and preservation of a rather exclusive version of it: Posh. The result is a restoration comedy of rumbustious proportions, and a book that will have you laughing out loud.

Kellett and Preston have created ‘The Dictionary of Posh’, published by Quiller, which serves as an essential guide to the (ab)use of many English words by the decidedly up-market and the resultant – and endangered – language they speak: Posh.

Hugh Kellett hilariously captures the spirit and nuances of those who speak Posh and, allied with Oliver Preston’s brilliantly accurate cartoons, this book is the key to understanding and interpreting this language ⁠- literally with tongue-in-cheek. 

Hidden within normal English is a separate language still spoken by those born with silver spoons in their mouths. It’s called Posh. A word of English can be spelt the same but mean something completely different in Posh. If you say the word ‘Mention’ in English, people will understand ‘Remark upon’; but in Posh this means a large house. Say ‘Ace’ and speakers of Posh will think you are referring to a cold thing one’s butler puts in one’s G&T.

This is a fun book – a witty guide on how we can all sound awfully upper class. Thoroughly recommended.

The Dictionary of Posh, Incorporating the Fall and Rise of the Pails-Hurtingseaux Family, can be acquired here.