This eloquent pair of authors are a language lover's dream. The book captures the pugnacious parlance of wartime in all its oxymorons, its inventive acronyms, its clever rhetoric, its racy slang and its appalling euphemisms. There are surprises, too: humour, sexiness and neology: Jeep, SPAM, flak, kamikaze and mega, to name a few linguistic creations. The enduring semantic legacy, over seven decades, teaches us a lot about how we communicate in a crisis; something that's particularly pertinent today. -- Gary Nunn * Guardian 'Mind your language' columnist *<br />Much of the value in this little book lies in the similarly extensive background details that Gooden and Lewis supply throughout. -- Michael Quinion * World Wide Words *<br />This wonderful book defines the wartime words and phrases that still resonate in the language of peacetime. -- Iain Finlayson * Saga Magazine *