Containing 36,000 references and 47,000 definitions, The Chambers Mini Dictionary is the ideal easy-to-use guide to finding the right word and spelling every time. Clearly structured entries include information on pronunciation, history, related terms and examples to give you extra help with choosing and using the right word. New good writing supplement informs and entertains with tips on effective style and structure, global English and memory.

The Chambers Paperback Dictionary and Thesaurus provides thousands of clear dictionary definitions plus thesaurus alternatives for 9,000 common words in a single volume. The dictionary: word entries include information on pronunciation, related terms and associated set phrases to give you extra help with choosing and using the right word. The thesaurus: word entries include numbered alternative meanings as well as antonyms – opposite words – to give you extra context in choosing and using the right word. A selection of ‘types of’ panels gives extra depth in a range of fields from song and dance to food and flowers.

New good writing supplement: informs and entertains with tips on style and structure, commonly confused words, words to impress, global English and memory prompts for remembering tricky spellings.

Containing thousands of clear definitions, The Chambers Paperback Dictionary is the ideal easy-to-use guide to finding the right word and spelling every time.

Clearly structured word entries include information on pronunciation, related terms and associated set phrases to give you extra help with choosing and using the right word.

New good writing supplement informs and entertains with tips on effective style and structure, global English and memory prompts for remembering tricky spellings.

The Chambers Book of Great Speeches is the most comprehensive guide available to the inspired and inspiring speeches that have shaped the world we live in. There are over 250 speakers covered, from Bella Abzug to Emile Zola. Each speaker is introduced with a brief biography setting them in context. Each speech also has an introduction explaining its setting, and is accompanied by marginal notes which fill in any background information. The speeches themselves are international in scope and stretch throughout world history, from ancient times through to twenty-first century orators such as Barack Obama, Steve Jobs and Lord Coe.

This fully revised 3rd edition presents even more inspiring, reflective, insightful, witty and wise words from across the centuries. With its broad historical scope it is the ideal tool for checking a half-remembered line, finding a telling turn of phrase, or simply browsing the accumulated wit and wisdom of the ages.

This edition brings contains thousands of new quotations up to 2015, mixing old favourites and new sources such as Barack Obama, Bradley Wiggins, Kurt Vonnegut, Arsene Wenger, Richard Dawkins, Seamus Heaney, Pope Francis and 50 Cent.

This is a browser’s paradise stretching from ancient times to the present day. Entries are arranged alphabetically by author, starting with Diane Abbot’s description of the United Kingdom’s Parliament as ‘a nightmare of elderly white males’ and finishing with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg telling us to ‘move fast and break things’. Between those two extremes are just under 1000 pages of quotations, followed by a 350-page keyword index, so you can locate a quote even if you can only remember a single word or phrase.

As well as literary quotations from important authors past and present this collection contains quotations from writers, critics, politicians and journalists. We have sought out memorable phrases from scientists, industrialists, entertainers, sportspeople, and many more, to reflect the diversity of modern life. And just as the world has changed since the last edition of this dictionary, so many of the hundreds of new quotations reflect these changes, and important global and local events.

The Chambers Dictionary of Great Quotations includes quotations from over 4,000 sources, including: Jonathan Aitken, Woody Allen, Giorgio Armani, David Beckham, The Bible, Tony Blair, Don Bradman, Robert Burns, George W Bush, Catullus, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Brian Clough, Jarvis Cocker, Simone de Beauvoir, Charles Dickens, Tracey Emin, E M Forster, Stephen Fry, Joseph Heller, Charlton Heston, John Humphrys, Joan of Arc, Elton John, The Koran, Mao Zedong, George Melly, George Michael, Jo Moore, Andrew Motion, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sylvia Plath, Plato, Will Self, William Shakespeare, Stevie Smith, Kevin Spacey, Quentin Tarantino, Margaret Thatcher, Queen Victoria, Gore Vidal, Oscar Wilde, Michael Winner, Emile Zola and many more.

If you’ve ever struggled with a half-remembered line or you’ve got a quote in your head and don’t know where it comes from, this is the book for you.

Chambers Card Games for Families explains how to play more than 50 family card games. Ranging from slap-jack and snap to patience and pontoon, the games are highly entertaining as well as quick and easy to learn. The book includes simple games that children can play on their own, as well as more intricate games for the whole family, and is ideal for players of any age and experience.

With clear descriptions, helpful illustrations and useful tips, Chambers Card Games for Families is the essential companion for hours of family fun.

Chambers Card Games includes a wide-ranging selection of almost 100 card games: setting out the rules, explaining how to play and offering strategies and hints. Clear and concise, this new fully illustrated collection is authoritative yet – as importantly – great fun.

There’s a glossary, a history of card games, advice on card-playing etiquette and information on playing cards on the Internet. Find the card game you’re after with the useful list of alternative names, or use the number of players index to find a game for every occasion. There’s also a unique supplement on cheating: protect yourself from card sharks … or pick up a tip or two to get ahead on the sly.

From Boudicca to Boris Johnson, the Bloomsbury Group to the Camberwell Carrot and Darkplace Hospital to Sodomite’s Walk, Brewer’s London takes you on the scenic route through the landmarks, language and lore of this great city. More than 2,000 entries encompass words, phrases, historical events, notable London characters (both real and fictional), customs and ceremonies, institutions, artistic and literary works, celebrations and events, inventions, streets and districts, anecdotes, names and nicknames, terminology and slang.

Russ Willey is a native Londoner whose family’s London roots date back 200 years. He is the author of Chambers London Gazetteer.

Sample Entries

aris ‘Arse’ in the only instance of doubled cockney rhyming slang in common usage. It derives from the rhyme of ‘Aristotle’ with ‘bottle’, as in ‘bottle and glass’, and the latter’s rhyme with ‘arse’. The matter is further complicated by the occasional extension to ‘April (in Paris)’, for ‘aris’.

bale of hay It is often claimed that London taxi drivers are, in theory, compelled by an archaic law to carry a bale of hay in their vehicles at all times. Others say the law in question was repealed, but not until 1976. Alternative versions assert that it is a Public Carriage Office licensing requirement that there be sufficient room for such a bale beside the driver or in the boot. In fact, the driver of a horse-drawn cab was merely obliged, if and when he fed his animal in the street, to do so ‘only with corn out of a bag, or with hay which he shall hold or deliver with his hands’. This stipulation, from the London Hackney Carriage Act (1831), aimed to prevent feed remnants being scattered all over the highway and was indeed repealed in 1976. Cab drivers are also said to retain the legal right to urinate in public against the rear offside wheel of their vehicles but this too has no basis in fact. Nevertheless, all this misinformation continues to be propagated on the internet, where it can be found on dozens of websites of the ‘world’s dumbest laws’ variety. The Law Commission attempted to debunk the hay myth on its own website in 2006: ‘… any taxi driver who travels around accompanied by a bale of hay does so purely for his own amusement and not in compliance with any legal requirement.’

forty fousand fevvers on a frush A catchphrase serving as a litmus test of the traditional cockney pronunciation of ‘th’ as ‘f’ or ‘v’. With full phonetic spelling, ‘thousand’ must be rendered something like ‘fahzn’. The phrase probably originated in the 1920s and has several numerical variations, of which the most popular is ‘firty-free fousand fevvers on a frush’, which is why ‘feathers’ can signify a score of 33 in darts. Other versions refer to a ‘frush’s froat’, sometimes with no reduction in the feather count.

Giro the Nazi dog The pet terrier (not an alsatian, as some have claimed) of the German ambassador to the court of St James’s in 1932–6, Leopold von Hoesch, who was in fact said to have disliked the Nazis. When Giro was accidentally electrocuted in February 1934, Hoesch had his remains buried in the gardens of Carlton House Terrace, part of which was home to the German Embassy until the outbreak of the Second World War. The ‘Nazi dog’ appellation has been popularized in the context of Giro’s diminutive tombstone, which has lately become a destination for those seeking out London’s most obscure and offbeat sights. The dog’s memorial reads, ‘Ein treuer Begleiter!’ (A faithful companion). The grave is located behind railings near the Duke of York’s column.