J. Davidson - Planet Word

‘All because the lady loves Milk Tray’Cadbury’s advertising campaign, Leo Burnett, 1968

‘Opal Fruits! Made to make your mouth water’Mars advertising campaign, c. 1970

‘For Mash get Smash!’Smash advertising campaign, Boase Massimi Pollitt, 1974

‘Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet’Hamlet advertising campaign, Collett Dickenson Pearce & Partners, 1960

‘The end line has got to resonate with people’Don Bowen, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘Now the laborers and cablers and council-motion tablers were just passing by’McDonald’s, Leo Burnett, 2009

‘I think there will always be good stories to tell’Don Bowen, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘Unless your advertising contains a big idea it will pass like a ship in the night’David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising , Prion Books, 1995

‘In Great Britain, there are twelve million households’David Ogilvy, The Theory and Practice of Selling the Aga Cooker, issued by Aga Heat Limited, June 1935

‘no credentials, no clients and only $6,000 in the bank’David Ogilvy, An Autobiography , John Wiley & Sons; Revised Ed edition, February 1997

‘Did it make me gasp when I first saw it?’David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising , Prion Books, 1995

‘The Man in the Hathaway shirt’C. F. Hathaway, Ogilvy and Mather, 1951

‘At sixty miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock’Rolls Royce advertising campaign, Ogilvy & Mather, 1958

‘Only Dove is one-quarter cleansing cream’Dove advertising campaign, Ogilvy & Mather,

‘The consumer is not a moron’David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising , Prion Books, 1995

‘Being edited by Ogilvy was like being operated on by a great surgeon’Kenneth Roman, The King of Madison Avenue: David Ogilvy and the Making of Modern Advertising , Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

‘I do not regard advertising as entertainment or art form’David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising , Prion Books, 1995

‘David Ogilvy 1911 — Great brands live for ever’Leo Burnett, 1999

‘A lot of communication has nothing to do with the words’President Clinton, The Art of Oratory, BBC News, April 2009

‘Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!’William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 3:2, 73, Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1992

‘To be or not to be’ Hamlet, 3:1, 56, Penguin Classics, 2007

‘Out, damn spot’William Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5:1, 35, Penguin Classics, 2007

‘Brutus is an honourable man’William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, 3:2, 87, Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1992

‘Words paint pictures; words draw our imagination’The Reverend Jesse Jackson as quoted in The Art of Oratory, BBC News, April 2009

‘It is this fate, I solemnly assure you, that I dread for you’Demosthenes, translated by Arthur Wallace Pickard in The Public Orations of Demosthenes, Volume I, The Echo Library, January 2008

‘Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this’Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address, Penguin, August 2009

‘I am tired of fighting. Our Chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead’Kent Nerburn, Chief Joseph & the Flight of the Nez Perce: The Untold Story of an American Tragedy, HarperOne, 2006

‘We shall not flag or fail’Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, 4 June 1940, as quoted in David Cannadine (ed.), Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Great Speeches, Penguin Classics, 2007

‘He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle’Edward R. Murrow, CBS broadcast, 30 November 1954, quoted in David Cannadine (ed.), Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Great Speeches, Penguin Classics, 2007

‘that branch of the art of lying which consists in very nearly deceiving your friends without quite deceiving your enemies’Francis Cornford, quoted by Michael Balfour in Propaganda in War, 1939–45: Organizations, Policies and Publics in Britain and Germany , Routledge, 1979

‘You know what “morale” is, don’t you?’Graham Greene, John Dighton, Angus MacPhail, Diana Morgan, Went the Day Well? Ealing Studios, 1942

‘It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words’George Orwell, 1984, Penguin, 2008

‘In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible’ibid.

‘partly to improve his French’; ‘and it was an ideology, not just a language’Bernard Crick, George Orwell: A Life, Penguin, 2nd revised edition, 1992

‘Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past’George Orwell, 1984, Penguin, 2008

‘That propaganda is good which leads to success’Joseph Goebbels, quoted by Joachim C. Fest, The Face of the Third Reich , Penguin, new edition, 1995

‘Letting a hundred flowers blossom’Roderick MacFarquhar, The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals , Praeger, 1960

‘War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength’George Orwell, 1984, Penguin, 2008

‘Political slogans are still useful because they sum up the approach’Don Bowen, Fry’s Planet Word , BBC 2011

‘The most brilliant propagandist technique’Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf , Jaico Publishing House, 37th edition, 2007

Planet Word is a companion work to the BBC series Fry’s Planet Word . Without Stephen Fry, none of it would have happened. His passion, erudition, wit and curiosity inform every page of the book. Thank you, Stephen. My special appreciation goes to Margaret Magnusson and Anna Magnusson, who helped beyond measure in making sure the words were put down on paper. Laura Herring and Louise Moore at Penguin shaped and edited the book, and Anthony Goff smoothed the whole process.

The book, like the television series, is a collective enterprise. Helen Williamson, my co-director, and the production team of Annie Macnee, Lucy Wallace, Lucy Tate and Clare Bennett all worked tirelessly and joyfully making the films happen. Simon Ffrench and Adam Toy made the sound and pictures sing, whilst Masahiro Hirakubo, Mikhael Junod and Paul Burgess skilfully edited the hours and hours of material.

At Sprout Pictures, Gina Carter, Zoe Rocha and Emily Martin provided back-up whenever it was needed. I’m particularly grateful to Janice Hadlow and Mark Bell at the BBC for having the courage to commission a series about words.

So many people, too numerous to mention individually, have contributed their time and expertise over the past two years; they are the heart and soul of the series and the book. Arika Okrent, Steven Pinker, Declan Kiberd, Paul Frommer, Ray Dolland and Cathy Price were ever generous with their time. In particular I would like to thank Nigel Williams, Robert McCrum, Guy Deutscher and Sir Christopher Ricks for their help and insights throughout.

And lastly, thank you, Robbie, Calum, Ellie and Louis, who have had to bear so many conversations about language that my wife, Margaret Magnusson, and I often forgot to talk to them.