A review by compassrose
The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase by Mark Forsyth

Useful enough as a reference for knowing the things exist, but VASTLY irritating in its elaborations; Mark Forsyth thinks he's terribly clever and extremely funny. He very much is not the latter and appears to be exaggerating the former considerably, but he's really trying. Pretentious, contrived and often inaccurate short explanations of various common English figures of rhetoric, often referencing Shakespeare (of whom Forsyth talks as though he meets the Bard regularly at the pub) and God (who apparently directly wrote, in English, Forsyth's copy of the Bible). Frequently gender essentialist (the opposite nature of ladies and gentlemen, and their invariably heterosexual inclinations, are taken as a given) and generally annoying. Stephen Fry could've done a far better job, and moreover would probably have had a much better idea of what he was talking about, AND have been able to reference primary sources.