John De-Falbe

One-man triumph

The Companion to British History (Third Edition), by Charles Arnold Baker<br /> <br type="_moz" />

issue 31 January 2009

The Companion to British History (Third Edition), by Charles Arnold Baker

Readers familiar with the first edition of The Companion to British History (Loncross, 1997) will already know that its value as a reference work proceeds from an inclusive attitude towards its subject. Besides providing the rudiments — monarchs, battles etc — the CBH was particularly strong on the constitution, law, local history, the Empire, anecdote, circumstance, and much else. It was also a useful stand-in for The Dictionary of National Biography. This third edition comes again with the glorious yellow jacket (which Routledge’s second edition discarded), but it has many more entries. We can read, for example, a crisp two-page summary of the Blair and Brown Government. A passing reference to ‘public relations tacticians known as spin doctors’ might tempt us to look up Alastair Campbell, but he is not there.

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