Lying is a hot topic. From bankers to phone hackers to hapless officials, we hear wonderful examples of lies that are not quite lies every day; 2014 has so far seen a bumper crop in the UK, from Eric Pickles ('I'll apologise. I'll apologise unreservedly. I am really sorry that we took the advice .we thought we were dealing with experts') to Bob Crow ('We're not here to score points'). How can we decipher all this flannel? In Romps, Tots and Boffins, Robert Hutton brilliantly 'laid bare' the true meanings of the words we read in the papers. Following popular demand, he now turns his razor-sharp eye to the best, worst and most outlandish examples of waffle, fudging, obscurity, blame-shifting, point-scoring - anything other than outright lying. In areas from politics to sports, academia, religion and self-help, it seems that glory, money and power tend to flow far more freely to those who succeed in sidestepping the bald, ugly truth.

You can steer a truck through the gap between a lie and the simple truth. This book tells you how to load the truck.