‘The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2005-2008’, by Lawrence Goldman – review

Where else would you possibly find George Painter, Jackie Pallo and Sir Eduardo Paolozzi in immediate successive proximity? The incunabulist of the British Museum who emerged from scholarly obscurity with his biography of Proust, the curly-blond wrestler in kinky trunks, and the son of an Edinburgh-Italian confectioner who became an avant-garde sculptor, have nothing whatever in common except that they died within the same four-year period, and they have all been accounted British worthies, deserving places in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

In September 2004, I wrote here about the astonishing new Oxford DNB, edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison and published in 50 magnificent volumes for which not many private readers had the shelf space, or the money, but which was available online, and I told its own story. The original DNB was one of the great achievements of Victorian England and of its editors, Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, coming to its terminus appropriately with the death of the Queen-Empress in 1901.