Crooked Talk: Five Hundred Years of the Language of Crime

The language of crime has a long and venerable history - in fact, the first collection of words specifically used by criminals, Hye-Way to the Spittel House, dates from as early as 1531. Jonathon Green is our national expert on slang, and in Crooked Talk he looks at five hundred years of crooks and conmen - from the hedge-creepers and counterfeit cranks of the sixteenth century to the blaggers and burners of the twenty-first - as well as the swag, the hideouts, the getaway vehicles and the ...