It is not often we find Reference Reviews quoted on the cover of a book, but so it is in this case. My predecessor found its first edition of 1997 “an impressive work of reference” (RR 1997/449) and I agree. So a full review is probably unnecessary. It suffices to inform librarians unacquainted with the 1st edition (such as myself) that it comprises a list of places in Britain and Northern Ireland with the names of famous people (living or dead) who were born there. At the end there appears a list of these places classified by county, and an index of persons, each with the relevant place‐name. Thus it is possible quickly to answer two questions: (1) where was any famous person born? and (2) what famous people were born in any given place?
The Introduction gives no indication of how many of the 4,000 entries have changed in the 2nd edition. But it has not been simply a matter of adding recent dates of death. There have certainly been revisions of the text. For instance, the entry on Sir Ian McKellen declares that his “range extends from Shakespeare to Tolkein (sic)”, which cannot have been written earlier than 2001. It appears that at least some entries have been added: J.K. Rowling is now included, whereas it would have been surprising if she was in the 1997 edition.
There are, as ever, a few slips. Occasionally these go further than the odd inaccurate date. The proof‐reader should really have noticed that the poet Thomas Cooper, who died in 1892, is unlikely to have “completed Mahler’s Tenth Symphony”. The treatment of peerage titles is inconsistent. Some are listed under the title with the surname given as well, such as “Lord Kelvin (William Thomson)”, but most are quoted simply under the title as if it were a surname giving a misleading impression, such as “John George Durham” without his family name of Lambton.
Such a work as this will always be striving for completeness, but a couple of examples from my native town will show how difficult that aim is. It is correctly stated that Virginia Bottomley MP was born in Dunoon, but the town’s most famous daughter, Burns’s fiancée Mary Campbell, is excluded, presumably because she is not in any of the nine (unnamed) biographical dictionaries which have been used as a basis. It has been claimed that Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, was born there, but the normal biographical dictionaries do not quote his birthplace and so he is left out. I am sure, however, that in spite of such inherent difficulties, this useful and inexpensive book will continue to deserve the praise of reference librarians.
