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2025

  • Daphne du Maurier: The King's General
  • Deborah Lawrenson: The Secretary
  • Richard Cohen: How to Write like Tolstoy
  • Adrian Tinniswood: Noble Ambitions
  • Adrian Tinniswood: The Power and the Glory
  • Martin Williams: The King is Dead, Long Live the King
  • Gavin Plumley: A Home for all Seasons
  • Robert Harris: Precipice
  • Nigel Slater: A Thousand Feasts
  • Joan Aiken: Tales of London Town
  • Alan Connor: 188 Words for Rain
  • Ben Robinson: English Villages: An Extraordinary Journey through Time

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The Antipodean

I have the Kindle edition as well as the hardcover, mainly for the search function. James Murray is in the Autopeotomy chapter, which starts on page 131, just after Dick Snary.

Also concerning James Murray, but mostly Dr. W.C. Minor, is Simon Winchester's "The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary", which I really enjoyed.

Dark Puss

The Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang states that the phrase 'off, like Bob's horse, with nobody to pay the reckoning' means

"To decamp with all money, furniture and personal effects: nautical: from 1830's obsolete"

That's not very helpful though! If I can do better I'll come back later.

Cornflower

That's very helpful, thankyou! (And yes, the Kindle's search function is such a useful tool).

Dark Puss

Sorry, should have said that the reference I quoted gives R H Dana as the source of the quotation.

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