The Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester

The original Oxford English Dictionary was put together by volunteers who scoured the body of English literature to find uses for words that were definitive. One of the most prolific early contributors was a Dr WC Minor.

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When Minor was invited to one of the early launches of the dictionary, it emerged he was unable to attend, as he was an inmate of Broadmoor, an asylum for the criminally insane.

This historical novel is a tale of how a fascination with words brought people together to collaborate on this huge project, and at the same time a study of insanity and its effects on an intelligent person's life. With the knowledge we have today of psychiatry, it is easy to make retrospective diagnoses of someone's mental condition. This book explores what it must have been like to deal with mental illness in the days before psychiatric medicine. One reason to be happy you live in the 21st century.

(Review by Susan Erasmus)

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