This book builds on the success of Glanville Price's The Languages of Britain, published in 1984, which was widely acclaimed as the most lively, reliable and comprehensive survey of the great number of languages that have at one time or another taken root in Britain.

Glanville Price is Emeritus Professor of French at the University of Wales Aberystwyth. His previous publications include The French Language, Present and Past (1971), The Languages of Britain (1984) and the Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe (Blackwell, 1998). He also rewrote Byrne and Churchill's Comprehensive French Grammar for its fourth edition, published in 1993.