Defining the World The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson's Dictionary by Henry Hitchings Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 304 pp., $24 JONATHAN SWIFT, the tetchy author of Gulliver's Travels, rarely minced ...

He was, according to his biographer James Boswell, a huge man. When he was barely out of infancy, he contracted scrofula, a disease that severely impaired his eyesight and left his face horribly ...

But Johnson’s Dictionary just lies there, splayed like a patient etherised upon a table, or a specimen readied for dissection. It can’t be browsed or thumbed, its pages can’t be ruffled; you can’t ...

Ian Redford is playing legendary lexicographer Dr Samuel Johnson in Max Stafford-Clark’s Out of Joint production A Dish of Tea with Dr Johnson at the Arts Theatre. Here he reveals how he became ...