...Would you take to a desert island?

THE 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, in which every word is not just defined but illustrated with examples of its use from the earliest days, so you get a filtered screenshot of the whole of the English language and much of its literature.

I could browse in it for hours each day and be reminded of many books I’d read and many I hadn’t. And of course when I came to write my Desert Island Novel on papyrus made from chewed palm leaves, my spelling would be impeccable.