 Only when Harper Collins editor Larry Ashmead read the proposal and championed the book did Winchester pursue the necessary research in earnest.Of the project Ashmead said "we can make lexicography cool".It was Ashmead who persuaded Winchester to call the US edition "The Professor and the Madman" (over Winchester's objection that Murray was not a professor), saying "No one here knows what the hell a Crowthorne is."