Telford and Wrekin Lives
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is the national record of people who’ve shaped British history, worldwide, from the Romans to the 21st century. The ODNB currently includes the life stories of over 60,000 men and women who died in or before 2016.

In the more than 70 million words of the ODNB, Telford or Wrekin are mentioned 260 times.
Here you’ll find some famous (and some less familiar) Telford faces, including the Channel swimmer Captain Webb (above) and (below) author Hesba Stretton and ironmaster William Reynolds.
In addition, the Oxford DNB has entries on the writer Ellis Peters (Edith Pargeter), who was born in Horsehay a century ago this year, and the engineer Thomas Telford after whom Telford new town is named.







Who and how? in Telford and Wrekin
As well as looking for people by name, you can also search by place, for example:
- which famous people were born in Wellington?
- how many biographies include a reference to the Ironbridge?
- how many references are there to the Wrekin?
- people associated with Dawley?
How do I search?
The Oxford DNB includes the life stories of more than 60,000 men and women. Online you can search for where they were born, baptized, lived, died or were buried, by date range or location.
- The advanced search ‘life event’ feature can be used to find people near you—be they men and women baptised in Edinburgh (189), those born in Whitby (28), or those buried in Exeter (133). Used in this way the ODNB is an excellent resource for school projects or family history.
- Text searching across the Oxford DNB’s 68 million words, you can also make links between people and places: for example, we’ve 102 references to “Clapham Common”, 27 to the “River Trent”, and 51 to “Snowdonia”.
What else does the Oxford DNB offer?
- Free biography podcast: as well as 60,000 life stories, the ODNB publishes a twice monthly biography podcast featuring some popular entries from the collection. There are now over 175+ episodes in the archive. Recent highlights include Diana, princess of Wales, George Orwell, John Lennon, and Bobby Moore.
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