On the inside cover is printed `A gift for ... from...', suggesting that this attractively produced book, humorously illustrated by Louise Morgan, is intended to be a stocking-filler, so perhaps we shouldn't be too critical of it. The subtitle is `Popular Expressions - What They Mean and Where We Got Them'. `What They Mean' is almost always pretty obvious - otherwise they would hardly be popular. A fairly high proportion of the explanations of `Where We Got Them' will surely not needed for someone who has a reasonable acquaintance with the Bible (to cast pearls before swine), Aesop's fables (sour grapes), Greek legends (the sword of Damocles), sailing (walking the plank). However, there are certainly some entries (cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey) whose intriguing origin few people would know. As this is the third edition of a book whose earlier ones were under different titles, it has obviously been a good seller. And it is a good deal handier and more up-to-date than Brewer's massive `Dictionary of Phrase and Fable'.
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