Books by Ian Yearsley

Did you know that aspersions are always cast, umbrage is always taken and the only thing that's madding is a crowd?All this and more can be explored in Single-context Words: A Study of a Quirk of the English Language, which uncovers the stories behind numerous words which are only ever used in one context.Ian Yearsley has spent 15 years collecting and researching single-context words and has written up over 300 examples in this volume. He explains how they came about and gives examples of their usage, with special reference throughout to the different parts of speech and how some suit single-context words better than others.The book explores a hitherto unexplored aspect of language and would be ideal as a gently humorous reference book, an educational work or an amusing, quirky gift book.This unique and compelling collection complements the existing body of language publications and is for anyone and everyone who has a love of and a fascination for language.

The story of Count Dracula, the blood-sucking vampire of Bram Stoker's classic gothic horror novel and the subsequent star of a multitude of stage and film presentations, is well-known: a creature which comes alive at night when everyone else is asleep to feast on the warm blood of young maidens before returning to its coffin home at dawn; one which can be repelled by garlic and crosses but killed only by a stake through the heart. What is not so well known is that much of Stoker's original 1897 novel is set in Essex - in the Thameside village (as it was then) of Purfleet, near Grays.Why should Bram Stoker have chosen such a seemingly insignificant settlement as the place where the Transylvanian vampire makes his English home? Could it be that the fiction of Dracula is based on some horrifying fact? Does Purfleet perhaps have a history of vampire associations? Are the characters and the locations in the novel drawn from actual people and places in the village? Or is there a more mundane reason for this Essex location being Stoker's choice?This book sets out to answer all these questions and more to provide once and for all an answer to the mystery of why Bram Stoker should wish to set such a horrific blood-curdling story in a quiet Essex Thameside village...

A history of Hadleigh