The Surgeon of Crowthorne - A Tale of Murder, Madness and the Love of Words

The making of the Oxford English Dictionary was a monumental fifty-year task requiring the assistance of thousands of volunteers. One of the keenest was a certain W.C. Minor, who astonished and dismayed everyone by declining ever to come to Oxford to receive his congratulations until, reputedly, his refusals eventually prompted the Dictionary's editor, James Murray, to travel down to Crowthorne, in Berkshire, to meet him. What he found was utterly shocking. Minor was a millionaire American Civil War surgeon turned lunatic, imprisoned in Broadmoor Asylum for murder, who had dedicated his entire cell-bound life to work on the English language. Simon Winchester tracks down this uplifting tale of tragedy, genius and passion in all its bizarre and fascinating detail. The Surgeon of Crowthorne is one of the great untold stories of literature...