The book tells the story of James Murray, one of the chief compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary, and his correspondence and friendship with one of the Dictionary's most prolific contributors — a mysterious Dr W.C. Minor of Crowthorne in Berkshire, who turned out to be an American army surgeon confined to Broadmoor Asylum for murder...
I haven't got very far into it yet, but Simon Winchester is obviously a great writer as well as an excellent historian, and is telling the story very engagingly and evocatively. I'd be interested to know if anyone else has read this or other books by Winchester — he's written quite a number by now — and any thoughts on them. But please, no spoilers for this one that the blurb and opening chapters haven't already given away! The main reason I'm starting a Simon Winchester thread here, though, is something that caught my eye in this interview with him from The New York Times in 2015, reprinted on the author's website. I particularly liked the start of his answer to this question:
Excellent tastes there, although I note he refers to George as Georgina — perhaps because the NYT's American readership, not being so familiar with Enid Blyton, might get the wrong idea about what kind of character he was "rather in love" with!What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most?
Enid Blyton, most especially the Famous Five series (I think I was rather in love with the tomboyish Georgina, an admission which won me some rather odd looks in later life). There was E. Nesbit’s “The Railway Children.” And best of all, “Kim”: The first time I visited Lahore I went to find his great brass cannon, Zam‑Zammah, and it was still there outside the museum. Once my voice broke and I got spots, there was “The Riddle of the Sands,” by Erskine Childers, the best of all sailing adventure spy stories, which I must have read a dozen times before I left school.
