In the novel, this is Esme’s doing: when the word falls off a table in the Scriptorium or “scrippy” – the Oxford garden shed in which the dictionary is compiled – she pockets it. He announced at Hay Festival that we were working on the project together, but we had still to find a publisher who would take the idea and run with it.

js, which is an older version of Google Analytics and is used in conjunction with the __utmb cookie to determine new sessions/visits. To mark one year since The Lost Words was published, Penguin Books asked Rob Bushby to summarise the breadth and depth of responses generated. The basic outline is sound — and I liked the way it made me want to delve farther into my own side stories on this subject and the publication of dictionaries, this one just didn't deliver it for me on its own. It’s been described by The Guardian as “a cultural phenomenon” and by the naturalist and presenter Chris Packham as a “revolution”. How can we teach children that bluebells are important, that acorns have value, if the words are not important enough to be in the dictionary found in most schools?Pip Williams was born in London, England, before migrating to Sydney, New South Wales, where she grew up.

It wasn’t the fault of the dictionary that these words were not included, but the culture in which we live which seems to give more importance to the urban than the wild.Esme too had her trials, often due to choices she made, but I felt like the story was brought down by her constant sadness and long bouts of depression. A group of young classical composers in New York, led by Aawa White, are working withthematerial to produce a series of new compositions and performances in North America. Having always loved the etymology of words and the evolution of languages, I went into this thinking I'd adore the basic pull through the story, even if the overall threads were a bit loose. It is about who has power and who has control, not just about what goes into a compilation of words, but in politics and in our lives.