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Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28512, 15 February 1958, Page 3

The present popularity of books on English usage and grammar is evidence of a widespread desire to understand the principles of good written English. Written English varies from the spoken idiom less in vocabulary than in construction, in its pattern. In the Penguin “The Pattern of English” (168 pp.), G. H. Vallins discusses the syntax and construction of English historically from Old English times. This is a good approach, and no teacher of English should fail to note the appendix to this book which recommends the wider use of such a historical approach in schools. This book is primarily for the general user of English, but ’it will have an additional appeal to the student for its description of the syntax of Old English, a topic often neglected in Old English grammars. 4