Following the continued success of a wave of spelling and punctuation titles published in the past eighteen months, James Essinger's 'Spellbound' is an engagingly written, unique and comprehensive account of why the English language is riddled with words that are difficult to spell. Starting with an analysis of the first writing systems, via the origins of English spelling and how this has evolved, the book concludes with intriguing stories of how the spelling of many hard-to-spell words evolved.