Simon Fanshawe investigates the histories of five great reference books. 2: A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. Eric Partridge spent his life collecting the oddities of spoken English, from the language of Tiddlywinks to the jargon of the Rhodesian army. He first published his classic dictionary in 1937, but was still revising it at the time of his death over 40 years later. Producer Peter Everett