What do Corbyn and Thatcher have in common?

The late Alan Watkins was so right that no half-hour spent with Who’s Who is ever wasted. This is partly because it is complete in certain categories — MPs, peers, bishops, judges, generals etc — and therefore dependable; partly because no one can be removed from it except by death, so that it builds up a picture of the past 50 years or so; and partly because each entry is self-composed, so that one can read character between the lines. It takes a certain buoyancy, for example, to dare to fill an entire column of the book with your own entry. In the 2018 edition, the longest entry belongs to Professor Sir Colin Blakemore, filling one and three-quarter columns with his degrees and committees, his membership of the Company of Spectacle Makers, his medal from the S Western Opthalmol Soc (1978) and his recreation, which is ‘wasting time’.

A harder matter to judge is who is not in Who’s Who but should be.