The Surgeon of Crowthorne

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.