News

This month’s update, published on the 80th anniversary of VE Day, views the events of 8 May 1945 through twenty-one lives in ODNB: including George VI, Clementine Churchill, Alan Brooke, Charles Portal, Gertrude Denman, and Lord Woolton.

Welcome to the 121st update of the Oxford DNB which, to mark UK City of Culture Year, 2025, surveys 325 biographies of people connected with Bradford and its metropolitan area in West Yorkshire. Eleven portrait likenesses are also added.

Welcome to the 120th update of the Oxford DNB, which adds one new article and one updated article, surveying 75 South Asian and 297 Black lives in the Oxford DNB, ranging over fifteen centuries.

Welcome to the 119th update of the Oxford DNB which comprises four new and nine updated articles, adding the lives of eight women and men active from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, accompanied by two new portrait likeness.

Welcome to the 118th update of the Oxford DNB, featuring the lives of operatic and theatre singers. This update adds biographies of seven women and men, accompanied by one new portrait likeness. The update also includes 82 updated Reference Lists, and identifies over 1,500 biographical anniversaries in 2025.

Meet influential individuals with milestone anniversaries in 2025, marking significant life events ranging from 100 to 400 years ago. Browse our collection of biographies and learn more about each person's life and legacy …

Welcome to the 117th update of the Oxford DNB, which adds seven twentieth-century lives, including three émigrés from continental Europe, two businesspeople, a mosaicist, and a figure from London’s criminal underworld. The update also includes one updated article and six new portrait likenesses

Welcome to the 116th update of the Oxford DNB, which has a special focus on lives with a global dimension, literary lives, and medical lives. This update adds twelve new biographies, spanning four centuries, and one reference group article, and also includes four revisited biographies. There are also three additional portrait likenesses.

Welcome to the 115th update of the Oxford DNB, which adds biographies of four people of African or part-African descent in Britain and its empire, accompanied by a reference group article and seven new portrait likenesses. 

To celebrate the ODNB turning 20, we’re sharing thirty influential lives from the British Isles spanning nearly two millennia.