Word of Mouth - 21/12/2010

Michael Rosen begins a new series by exploring the British Library's first ever exhibition on the history of English. The exhibition is called "Evolving English", and Michael's guests include David Crystal, the author of the book of the same name. Comics, adverts, text messages and trading records have all been used by the British Library to chart the development of English from a language spoken on a small island to the global language we know today. The curators explain how they chose the exhibits, including the earliest surviving copy of Beowulf, the King James Bible, and the poem "Essay to Miss Catharine Jay", which contains the phrase "I wrote 2 U B 4", printed well over a hundred years before the advent of text messaging.