Murray’s candidature for the prestigious editorship, that the panel relents.

It is only through the efforts of Frederick Furnivall (Steve Coogan), Secretary of the Philological Society who champions Dr. The snobbish panel of philology academics are confounded with his astounding command over a multitude of diverse languages, but they remain unconvinced. He explains that he is an autodidact who left education at 14 to earn a living. But they view him with disdain because he does not have a doctorate. One wonders why it took so long for a film to be made on the subject, considering that it was breaking news in the English newspapers at the time.īased on the 1998 non-fiction book, The Surgeon of Crowthorne by Simon Winchester, the film is set in the 1870s, when the OUP management was reviving its attempts to bring out a comprehensive English dictionary that would trace the historical development of English words, as well as their usage in the many variations throughout the world.Ī Scottish lexicographer and philologist, Professor James Murray (Mel Gibson), who is a teacher at the Mill Hill School at the time, appears before the Philological Society to offer his credentials to take up the stalled editorship of this massive undertaking that has been in the works for 20 years. A moving biographical film based on a true story, The Professor and the Madman centres on the compilation of Oxford University Press (OUP)’s very first edition of the English Dictionary based on Historical Principles in the mid-19th century, and the unexpected friendship that develops between a brilliant academic and a criminally insane murderer.

Professor and the madman book review