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2025

  • Daphne du Maurier: The King's General
  • Deborah Lawrenson: The Secretary
  • Richard Cohen: How to Write like Tolstoy
  • Adrian Tinniswood: Noble Ambitions
  • Adrian Tinniswood: The Power and the Glory
  • Martin Williams: The King is Dead, Long Live the King
  • Gavin Plumley: A Home for all Seasons
  • Robert Harris: Precipice
  • Nigel Slater: A Thousand Feasts
  • Joan Aiken: Tales of London Town
  • Alan Connor: 188 Words for Rain
  • Ben Robinson: English Villages: An Extraordinary Journey through Time

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Dark Puss

No fusion? Try fission instead! P x

Cornflower

I thought you might say that!

Esmeralda

Please tell me (with rhyming explanation) how a Scot would pronounce "futret". I have just finished Lewis Grassic Gibbon's Sunset Song and this particular word was really annoying me, because I couldn't 'hear' it.

Cornflower

I don't think I've heard the word before, Esmeralda, but instinctively I'd pronounce it 'foo-tret' with the emphasis on the first syllable. On the other hand, having checked various dictionaries, I see it can also be spelt with two 't's, so maybe the 'u' is as in 'shut'?
Perhaps someone will enlighten us.

Esmeralda

Thank you - I was trying to make it sound like "ferret".

Dark Puss

Esmerelda, I thought you might like this quotation:

From Scotland the What?, by Buff Hardie, Stephen Robertson and George Donald (Gordon Wright, 1987)

In this comic monologue from 1982, the owner of a toy shop in Ballater, near Aberdeen telephones the Princess of Wales to ask what her son would like for Christmas.

Noo, fit wid he like for his Christmas, the loon? Fit aboot a pair o’ fitba beets? Beets. Beets. B-O-O-T-S, beets. Weel, I ken that, but he’ll surely grow intae them. Weel I’ll tell ye fit I’ve got. It’s something very suitable. It’s oor ain special line in soft toys, and it is a cuddly futret. A futret. Div ye nae ken fit a futret is? Futret. F-E-R-R-E-T, futret. Now, cuddly futrets is exclusive tae the Toy Shop, Ballater. We get them specially made up by a wee wifie, in Hong Kong. Oh, an’ fit a job I hid explainin’ tae her fit a futret is. Ye wid like a futret? Oh we’ll fairly manage ye a futret. Noo fit size o’ a futret wid ye like? We’ve got a dinkie futret, a mini futret, a life-size futret, a jumbo futret or a mega-futret. Ye’d like a jumbo futret? No, it disnae hae a trunk. No, it’s got a string that ye pull, an’ it sings Run, Rabbit, Run. Weel, fit else div ye expect a futret tae sing? Now is there onythin’ else the loon wid like? Fit aboot a rubber duke...for his bath? A duke. No, no, nae that kinda Duke. D-U-C-K, duke. A quack quack duke. Like Donald Duke. Donald Duke. He’s a freen’ o’ Mickey Moose...Moose...M-O-U-S-E, Moose! God, div ye nae understan’ English, lassie?
Cornflower

That's brilliant! Thanks, DP.
Scotland the What? were very funny (some/all of them were all lawyers, I think!)

Dark Puss

My pleasure.

Dorothy

You sound fair scunnered.

Cornflower

Another very good word!

esmeralda

I'm so glad I asked! Thanks

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