A gripping tale of violent passions and madness and the precise
meaning of words. Two men, miles apart, toil away on a formidable
project that was scheduled to take 10 years but in the event
demanded 71. Their booklined rooms keep them safe from the roar of
the outside world - one a study at Oxford University, the other a
cell in Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane. James Murray,
editor of The Oxford English Dictionary, is a willing captive, a
respectable academic content in his tower, while Dr W C Minor, one
of the OED's most prodigious and painstaking contributors, is held
for his own safety as he is constantly pulled back into the
maelstrom of his own private madness. They both delight in their
task, however, and communicate over many years by footnote,
annotation and cross-reference. Winchester is a maddeningly good
writer and invests a tale that, in truth, is almost without
incident with genuine pace and tension. (Kirkus UK)
Two distinguished looking Victorians, both learned and serious, yet from very different worlds: one a brilliant polymath, the other a madman and murderer
Dr James Murray, erudite and pious, who broke free from an impoverished childhood to become a towering figure of British scholarship and editor of the great Oxford English Dictionary.
Dr W. C. Minor, lascivious, charismatic, a millionaire American Civil War surgeon and homicidal lunatic. Confined to Broadmoor Asylum he pursued his passion for words and became one of the most valued contributors to the OED.
Their lives and unlikely friendship are unravelled in Simon Winchester's classic work of detection.
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