John Edwards is Modern Languages Faculty Research Fellow in Spanish at the University of Oxford. His books include The Spanish Inquisition, Ferdinand and Isabella and Mary I: England's Catholic Queen. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Correspondiente de la Real Academia de la Historia (Madrid).

• 1 AN INTRODUCTORY OVERVIEW 2 LANGUAGES IN THE WORLD 3 BILINGUALISM 4 LANGUAGES IN CONFLICT 5 LANGUAGES AND IDENTITIES 6 THE PRESCRIPTIVE URGE 7 LANGUAGES, CULTURES AND EDUCATION 8 CONCLUSIONS

'Read this book and you will go to bed content. You too can be a multilingualist, if not a linguist.' - Times Higher Education Supplement'Using multilingualism as an umbrella, John Edwards explores, with impressive erudition, a whole host of interconnected topics ranging from language origins and language death to the bilingual brain and the question of individual and collective identities.' - Lynn Williams, University of Exeter'John Edwards takes a broad approach to the question of languages in contact...in depth and scope...primary among the strengths...is the historical depth and richness in detail' - Juliet Langman, Canadian Review of Studies in Nationalism