The Meaning of Everything

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The idea that I should write this book came first from Alysoun Owen, an editor at Oxford University Press who had once read The Surgeon of Crowthorne and put it to me that since in that story I had written what was essentially a footnote to history, would I now care to try writing the history itself? It seemed a splendid idea, and it would have made for a pleasing symmetry to deliver the manuscript to Alysoun in due course—but for the fact that she took off on maternity leave shortly after I had begun work on the book. She was succeeded by the admirably competent Rebecca Collins, to whom I am extremely grateful; but since this book was in essence Alysoun's idea, I owe her a very great deal for first getting me involved in what turned out to be the most enjoyable of tasks.

Enjoyable and stimulating though the work may have been, its complexities would have tried me sorely had not Elizabeth Knowles—an old OUP friend with whom I have been in touch ever since she advised me on early drafts of the W. C. Minor story—agreed to help with the telling of this tale also. She advised me both on the book's overall tone and structure, and on the finer details relating to lexicography and etymology. Philip Durkin, an expert on etymology and a philologist at the OED, was most helpful in navigating the minefields of Chapter 1, and worked with Elizabeth on such vexing matters as the supposed origins of words like periwinkle, skirt, and ketchup.

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