Who’s Who in British History: Beginnings to 1901

Many of the entries in this handsome two‐volume biographical dictionary appeared in Shepheard‐Walwyn’s Who’s Who in British History series, published in eight chronological volumes, 1988‐1997, which themselves replaced Blackwell’s Who’s Who in History series (5 vols, 1960‐1975). In this new edition, the entries, once described in these columns as “a good blend of the erudite and the readable” (Reference Reviews, Vol. 3 No. 2, June 1989, p. 96), are rearranged into a single A‐Z sequence, preceded by 89 preliminary pages. An introductory essay, “The fascination of biography”, opens with the statement that “History is concerned above all with...