The OED.

There can’t be many publications which are routinely referred to just by their initials, and it’s a measure of the stature of the Oxford English Dictionary that those three initials are so universally recognized they’ve become part of our verbal shorthand.

Behind them lies a such an extraordinary story of genius, obsession and sheer bloody-mindedness that it’s very easy to forget we’re talking about a dictionary. A reference work. A dispassionate record and analysis of the English language as spoken and written (and frequently mangled) over several centuries by those who use it to communicate with each other and the world at large.

The lexicographer and Associate Editor of the OED, Peter Gilliver, is the ideal man to tell the story, having worked on the dictionary since the 1980s. There have been other, more populist, books about the birth of the OED – Simon Winchester’s The Meaning of…