I was truly amazed to find two new usage guides in a Dutch bookshop the other day – Donner, in Rotterdam. I mentioned a really good find there before, but that was a Dutch usage guide. This time there were two English ones that I hadn’t heard of before and so were quite new to me. I was quite unprepared to find them there in the first place.
Simon Heffer’s Scarcely English has been out since 2024 as The Guardian tells us, while Dreyer’s English is a little older – from 2019 – and got a not-so-positive review, also in The Guardian. Both are published by Penguin, who evidently seem to think that there is still a market for usage guides, printed ones, that is. How well are they selling in the UK, I wonder, and what made Donner select these two for a Dutch reading public? Have any readers of this blog had a look at them yet? Please leave your findings here, I’d be really interested.
Bridging the Unbridgeable 
I didn’t know about these either!
The fact that Donner in Rotterdam stocks these suggests a surprising appetite for English usage guides among Dutch readers—wonder if it’s tied to the strong ESL market there. Picked up “Dreyer’s English” a while back and found its tone more quirky than authoritative, which might explain that lukewarm Guardian review.