The man who made the English language come alive for millions of readers and viewers with 'The Story of English' reveals his own early enchantment with the English language.

'Wordstruck' is the story of Robert MacNeil's unabashed affair with words, from his Halifax childhood awash with intriguing accents to life as a traveling journalist who "delighted in finding pockets of distinctive English, as a botanist is thrilled to discover a new variety of plant."

Each aspect of Robert MacNeil's youthful existence prompted yet another linguistic thrill. Childhood churchgoing "did not provide me with any spiritual awakening ... but it anointed me with language." His mother's passion for the natural world and his father's life as a ship's skipper gave him two more complete vocabularies. And "If you define yourself by the language you acquire as you enter different spheres," MacNeil writes, the absurd language of "cricket was another piece of my self-definition."