Entry includes attestations of the head word's or phrase's usage, usually in the form of a quotation. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Reviews of the two-volume New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 2005: The king is dead. Long live the king! The old Partridge is not really dead; it remains the best record of British slang antedating 1945 Now, however, the preferred source for information about English slang of the past 60 years is the New Partridge. James Rettig, Booklist, American Library Association Most slang dictionaries are no better than momgrams or a rub of the brush, put together by shmegegges looking to make some moola. The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, on the other hand, is the wee babes. Ian Sansom, The Guardian The Concise New Partridge presents, for the first time, all the slang terms from the New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English in a single volume. With over 60,000 entries from around the English-speaking world, the Concise gives you the language of beats, hipsters, Teddy Boys, mods and rockers, hippies, pimps, druggies, whores, punks, skinheads, ravers, surfers, Valley girls, dudes, pill-popping truck drivers, hackers, rappers and more. The Concise New Partridge is a spectacular resource infused with humour and learning its rude, its delightful, and its a prize for anyone with a love of language.

Professor Dick Hobbs is a leading commentator on the culture of crime and criminality. East End born and bred, he is a fascinating dichotomy of the criminal and the intellectual world, allowing him a unique insight into a subject that holds fascination for so many. When he was growing up, the East End was rocking with dock strikes, thievery and the kind of family values practiced by the Krays the Tibbs and a few dozen other outlaw clans. Violence was everywhere Crime was an unavoidable fact of life. However, his real education in Plaistow taught him that the real essence of illegal capitalism is to be found amongst the poor bloody infantry of the crime world; the jump up merchants, lorry highjackers, warehouse thieves, and middle-market drug dealers. These are the people with whom he has spent most of his professional life, and along with more exalted villains such as Mad Frankie Frazer and Charlie Richardson, these are the characters who will feature in the book, weaving the stories of these fearsome gangsters with the history and evolution of the UK underworld.

Norman Parker spent 25 years of his life in a high security Category A prison. Convicted of murder and manslaughter in the 1970s, he was sentenced to life at the notorious Parkhurst Prison. Norman Parker has certainly seen a lot during his time on the inside, and this is his complete collection of tales from behind the bars. He encountered some of the highest-profile criminals in Britain, from the Kray twins to the Great Train Robbers, and met cannibals, IRA bombers, and cold-hearted killers. The Complete Parkhurst Tales is a shockingly powerful and intimate portrayal of the prison system filled with Norman Parker's sharp intelligence and witty observations on every aspect of the secret world in one of Britain's toughest jails.

With its unparalleled coverage of English slang of all types (from 18th-century cant to contemporary gay slang), and its uncluttered editorial apparatus, Cassell's Dictionary of Slang was warmly received when its first edition appeared in 1998. 'Brilliant.' said Mark Lawson on BBC2's The Late Review; 'This is a terrific piece of work - learned, entertaining, funny, stimulating' said Jonathan Meades in The Evening Standard.But now the world's best single-volume dictionary of English slang is about to get even better. Jonathon Green has spent the last seven years on a vast project: to research in depth the English slang vocabulary and to hunt down and record written instances of the use of as many slang words as possible. This has entailed trawling through more than 4000 books - plus song lyrics, TV and movie scripts, and many newspapers and magazines - for relevant material. The research has thrown up some fascinating results