Top Gear and Twitter join Dr Johnson’s updated dictionary
05.08.10 | Victoria Gallagher in The Bookseller\


Square Peg is to publish a humorous update of Dr Johnson’s dictionary looking at all aspects of modern life, from “Celebrity Big Brother” to David Cameron.

Dr Johnson’s Dictionary of Modern Life: Survey, Definition & justify’d Lampoonery of divers contemporary Phenomena, from Top Gear unto Twitter will be published on 2nd September as a £9.99 hardback.

Editor Rowan Yapp said: “Part of its charm is that it’s impossible to pigeon-hole. I might liken it to QI or last year’s surprise success Am I Alone in Thinking, in that it weds killer incisiveness with baffling oddity.
But, really, what drew me was simple—he genuinely makes me chuckle.”

The book is written by strategist Tom Morton under the alter-ego of Dr Johnson. Morton began writing as Dr Johnson on Twitter, he said: “Dr Johnson’s voice was a perfect match for Twitter: both suit short bursts of commentary on the follies of modern life.”
He added: “Twitter gave me confidence as a first-time author. I could prove how it would be popular because I had amassed followers and I knew what lines were working because people were retweeting them. There’s a strange democracy on Twitter where a complete amateur can be on an equal footing with a performer like comic Ed Byrne or Chris Addison or a writer like Armando Ianucci.”