This book is not solely about the Oxford English Dictionary. It combines no less than three of my interests, viz the English Language, the American Civil War, and the history of mental health care. The author initially employs the device of debating the feasibility of having more than one protagonist in a story. From an examination of OED definitions, he concludes that this is permissible, and proceeds to present us with a contrasting pair of characters. Minor suffers from mental illness, consorts with prostitutes, and ultimately commits murder. Murray is scholarly, sheltered and conservative. The combination of their contrasting individuality and aptitudes coalesce around the idea of the Dictionary put forward by Dr Trench in 1857, an intellectually revolutionary notion of its time, that it should be "...a democratic project...that demonstrated the primacy of individual freedoms, of the idea that one could use words freely, as one liked, without hard and fast rules of lexical conduct."(p94) The material in this book of what is a dictionary, how it is compiled, and the need for one in the context of linguistic history, are of fundamental interest to students of English. It is a pity that the book is not indexed. Two points intrigued me as a mental health professional. Not only did Minor support his victims widow financially, she also became a regular visitor to him in Broadmoor. Such a course would be seen as daringly positive risk-taking today, and possibly enlightened in clinical outcomes. The cultural specificity of insanity is also of interest. Upon hearing of the aircraft invented by the Wright Brothers, these became the means, in his delusional system, by which Minors nightly tormentors could more easily transport him from his cell and around the world. The title of this review, quoted from a newspaper description of the OED, purplish prose though it is, sums up the spirit of "The Surgeon of Crowthorne".