Glee-man, high-deedy & bendsome: a language to save England

Poverty and riots racked 19th-century rural England, but one eccentric Victorian cleric was convinced he had the solution – inventing a new language. Siân Rees introduces us to Reverend William Barnes, who developed a new version of English stripped of foreign words, which he was convinced would bind the nation together and return England to a state of harmony.

• Quiz: would you be able to speak in National English?