The making of the Oxford English Dictionary was a monumental 50 year task requiring thousands of volunteers. W C Minor, one of the keenest, astonished everyone by refusing to come to Oxford to receive congratulations. Finally the editor, James Murray, travelled to Crowthorne in Berkshire to meet him. There he discovered that Minor was a millionaire American Civil War surgeon turned lunatic, and that he was imprisoned in Broadmoor for murder. There he had dedicated his entire cell-bound life to working on the English language.