The Workhouse Encyclopedia

What a splendid book. I have got so used to encyclopedias compiled by professional encylopediasts doing it as a routine job, pulling together bundles of entries elicited from the usual crop of associate professors from minor American universities, that it comes as a rare and refreshing change to be given a reference book written by a single author with a real enthusiasm for his subject. I am not sure what Peter Higginbotham does for a living, but it seems clear from this, and his other books, that the history of the English workhouse has taken over his life, and that,...