(The knowledge contained in this has been shamefully poached from Melvyn Bragg's excellent book.  Any errors are entirely mine.  It's good for us poety-type people to have an insight into the currency we use.)

It is an arresting thought that a language spoken by around 150,000 people some 1500 years ago has become the foremost language in the world. 

Of course, some prompts have been historical.  As the cradle of the Industrial Revolution Britain stood at the vanguard of world trade and its business was conducted in English.

The subsequent growth of Empire led to whole English-speaking nations being created such as the USA and Australia; while in other countries with established languages English often became the second or even official language, such as Kenya, Fiji, Ghana, Malta, Singapore, South Africa and a host of others.

But other reasons for the phenomenal rise and spread of the English language are intrinsic.

Firstly it is the thief and whore of all tongues, stealing and lying with anyone.  Unlike France, for instance, which constructs institutions to protect the purity of its strain, English has always welcomed bastardisation.  A smattering of British and Celtic words such as gob, dad, brock, and dunnock predate and survived the English “invasion”.  Words taken from Old Norse such as dirt, weak, want, score, and knife brought by the Vikings have been assimilated and the Norman Conquest brought a whole class of language.  Where today we have two words for a single concept the chances are that the “posher” one is Norman. Wage/Salary, Buy/Purchase Ask/Enquire Follow/Ensue Cow/Beef and a host of others.

Daniel Defoe described it as “your Roman-Saxon-Danish-Norman English”.  If he were alive today he would have found room for West Indian and hi-tech and, above all, American, the most influential of modern inputs dominating as it does popular culture.

But equally and paradoxically to these influences, is the very durability of Old English itself.  A study of the 100 most commonly used words in English borrowed 3 from Old Norse (“they”, “them” and “their”) and the first French/Norman word, ”number”, came in at 76.

When Churchill gave his immensely powerful speech,

“We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds.  We shall fight in the fields and in the streets.  We shall fight in the hills.  We shall never surrender.”

Every word except one derived from Old English.  The exception? “Surrender”; which is illuminating in itself.  Was this coincidence or was it a conscious appeal to some atavistic calling deep within us?