A Dictionary of Allusions

A rough sample count suggests that there are about a thousand principal entries in this dictionary plus a respectable number of cross‐references: a modest, and modestly priced, contribution to the literature therefore. There are plenty of references from popular culture, mostly fairly recent, starting with Ab Fab see Absolutely Fabulous and ending with Zorro. It is curious to find King Arthur next to Laura Ashley, but any alphabetical index will yield similar quirks.

There are of course some oddities: Androcles was not originally a Christian fable, and we are not told where Shaw got his variant. The account of the...