Part guide, part social comment, Modern Manners is a succinct, witty and always authoritative guide to correct behaviour today.

John Morgan's `Modern Manners' column in Saturday's Times is one of the paper's most popular and talked-about features. Morgan's succinct and witty replies to readers' anxieties about the numberless pitfalls of correct behaviour today pull in sackfulls of post from around the globe.

The creme de la creme of this correspondence has now been selected by Morgan to appear in The Times Book of Modern Manners. Believing that civilized conduct can never be instilled at too young an age and that only those who have, sadly, left us need no longer aspire to the loftiest social heights, Morgan, the arbiter elegantum of our age, passes his inimitable judgements on behaving flawlessly from the cradle to the grave. Greetings, marriages, divorces, entertaining, sexual diplomacy, manners ont he moverand bereavement: all find their way under Morgan's finely focused social microscope.

What is the correct way to eat asparagus? How do you use a mobile phone elegantly? What should you wear at a funeral? How should a hostess react when her dog attacks a guest? When do you use `Esq'? And just how does Mr Morgan achieve that perfect little dimple in his tie?