The Surgeon of Crowthorne - discussion thread

[BellaDonna]

Well, the first thing to say is that I really enjoyed reading this book, though I hadn't been sure about reading non-fiction. In fact, it reminded me that I actually like reading about this sort of historical happening, as I also enjoyed reading “The Suspicions of Mr Whicher” by Kate Summerscale and “The Underground Man” by Mick Jackson.

It was fascinating to discover about the creating of the Oxford English Dictionary – I had no idea that it took so long, or was such a complicated process – in fact, I’d never heard anything about how it came into being so it was a bit of an eye-opener. I could tell that I was enjoying the book when I found myself reading the preface of the Little Oxford Dictionary that lives in my bedside table for the first time!

I enjoyed the story of the meeting between Murray and Dr Minor (both the legend and the true version!) and the development of their relationship, but sometimes felt that the structure of the story was a little clunky – there seemed to be very definite areas of the book that concentrated on the dictionary part of the story, and those that dealt with insanity and psychiatric disorders – I think they could have been a bit better merged into a more integrated whole.

But overall, I enjoyed it. Some parts surprised me by making me laugh, some parts were unbearably sad. I learnt a lot about the creation of a masterpiece, a bit about Broadmoor, and something about the treatment of psychiatric disorders over the years, and have a feeling that this is a book that I will remember for some time.

My favourite quote: "One woman even disparaged Johnson for failing to include obscenities. 'No, Madam, I hope I have not daubed my fingers,' he replied archly. 'I find, however, that you have been looking for them.'"

[Scarfy]

Sorry for the hijack but I used to live in Crowthorne!

[BellaDonna]

But could you walk out of your front door freely?

[*SarahR*]

I will come back to this when I have some time, but have just finished it, and agree with everything that you have said BellaDonna. I didn't expect to enjoy this book anywhere near as much as I did, I found it completely fascinating.

[Dr Spouse]

Yes I was wondering about that Scarfy!

This was such an enlightening book, and I also found I learned a lot (including where Broadmoor is - both Mr S and I were confusing it with Dartmoor )

I had been reading another popular non-fiction book and just got a bit irritated by it so I was really pleased to read this. Sometimes I find non-fiction books are really polemical, and sometimes they go on about something for pages and pages when I already got the point. So this was really balanced and easy to read.

I actually would have liked to hear more about the dictionary, but I am a word geek!

I got the impression that the information was kind of divided into two - she had the hospital notes, which never talked about the dictionary, and she had the dictionary information, with a few letters, which didn't talk about the hospital.

I was reading something recently about someone with schizophrenia who was getting on pretty well with little or no medication (which is very rare) but with a lot of self-therapy (like CBT) and a lot of that was concentrating on intellectually demanding tasks. Sounds like Minor managed to keep himself just about functioning in a similar kind of way.