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2005 updates: introductions

January 2005

New online contents, January 2005

Welcome to the first online release of the Oxford DNB. Each year we plan three updates of the dictionary, in January, May, and October, publishing new content in the online edition of the Oxford DNB. Each January issue will extend the dictionary's coverage by including noteworthy people who have died since 2000. Successive January issues will cover individuals who died in a particular year, beginning with 2001 and continuing in January 2006 with people who died in 2002, and so on. In this release we publish biographies of 195 people of note and distinction whose deaths occurred in 2001.

In this way we shall add regularly to the Oxford DNB which, as published in September 2004, contained over 54,000 lives of people who had died up to the end of the year 2000. The lives we include in this release continue the dictionary's tradition of recognizing achievement and influence in many different areas of national life, including politics, public administration, business, the arts, and scholarship. But we have not neglected fields such as sport and popular entertainment, from which emerge many of the most celebrated and influential figures of the age. Just under a third of people included in this release were born before the First World War. The majority were born in the 1920s and 1930s. Thirty-one individuals were born outside the British Isles and members of this group came from twenty different countries in all. Forty-four lives, just under a quarter of the total, are women.

Lives in politics, science, and business

The collection of notable political figures among the new additions includes Quintin Hogg, Viscount Hailsham, the leading Conservative politician and lord chancellor in the 1970s and 1980s; Peter Shore, the Labour minister of the 1960s and 1970s; Frank Pakenham, seventh earl of Longford, perhaps more famous for his pursuit of moral and humanitarian causes than for his career in parliament and the cabinet; and the former Welsh secretary Cledwyn Hughes. We also include a memoir of Sir Gordon Reece, who was Margaret Thatcher's image consultant.

There are men of action here: James (Johnnie) Johnson, the great Second World War fighter pilot, and Brian Trubshaw, who test-flew the first Concordes in the 1960s, alongside Lord Carver and Sir Walter Walker, distinguished soldiers who came to positions of national prominence, though for rather different reasons. Scholarship and research are also well represented. The life of Elizabeth Anscombe gives access to important developments in philosophy during the mid-twentieth century, while the remarkable advances in cosmology in the same period are discussed in the entry for Sir Fred Hoyle. Other scientists include Tom Kilburn, a pioneer of the earliest computers; the hepatologist Dame Sheila Sherlock; and Sir Harold Ridley, who invented the intraocular lens implant and literally brought sight to millions around the world. The chemist Herchel Smith, whose fortune was made from research which led to the manufacture of the contraceptive pill, is also included, as much for his remarkable philanthropy in making large donations to British and American universities for the endowment of science as for his own scientific contributions.

Marcus Sieff of Marks and Spencer, Alistair Grant of Safeway, Hyman Kreitman of Tesco, and Dennis Curry, chairman of the electrical goods chain, represent the world of retailing—though Curry's biography is of added interest because of his work as a geologist. And Grant, who wrote the memoir of James Gulliver (1930 1996) for the 2004 edition of the Oxford DNB, now joins his business partner in the dictionary. Among other businessmen, Joseph Bamford, founder of JCB, which has become the ubiquitous shorthand name for mechanical diggers, is included.

Hitch-hikers to historians

Entries on writers as varied as Douglas Adams, author of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the satirist Auberon Waugh, the literary critic and author Lorna Sage, and W. G. Sebald, who brought the distinctive voice and themes of central Europe to recent English literature, form a significant component of our new coverage. They are joined by some very popular and very different actors and actresses, including Sir Nigel Hawthorne, Sir Harry Secombe, Peggy Mount, and Nyree Dawn Porter, the last of whom will be forever associated with the famous 1960s BBC production of John Galsworthy's The Forsyte Saga. Biographies drawn from the worlds of music and the arts further illustrate the dictionary's interest in high and popular culture. They include the ballerina Dame Ninette de Valois; Dame Ruth Railton, founder of the National Youth Orchestra; Joseph Cooper, the music broadcaster famed for his 'dummy keyboard' in the television programme Face the Music; and Delia Derbyshire, who composed the haunting theme tune for the Doctor Who television series. The potter Norah Braden, the photographer Helen Muspratt, and the fashion historian Stella Newton are also included. The articles on Denys Lasdun and Richard Seifert will be of interest to anyone seeking to understand the controversies over British architecture during the past generation.

Icons and critics of the Sixties

Memoirs of a group of eminent historians, including the medievalist Richard Southern, the historical demographer Peter Laslett, and J. H. (Jack) Plumb, who made the eighteenth century his own, indicate trends in historical scholarship. The articles on Sir Dmitri Obolensky and Sir Ernst Gombrich demonstrate the great contribution of scholars born abroad, or in close contact with other cultures, to the academic life of the nation. The memoirs of two 'children of the 1960s', George Harrison, guitarist and singer with the Beatles, and Nicholas Albery, a protean organizer of alternative community groups and campaigns, will evoke special memories of time and place for many readers. Lovers of sport, and followers of Scottish association football in particular, will forever associate the late James (Jim) Baxter, with a single match at Wembley stadium in 1967, when the Scots defeated the world cup-winning England team. Other notable lives include Leopold Marks, the Second World War cryptographer, Larry Adler, the entertainer, and Mary Whitehouse, who campaigned against supposedly declining standards in public broadcasting. She would surely have approved of two notable children's broadcasters in our group: Muriel Young, who presented children's programmes on the BBC, and Harold Williamson, who pioneered the art of interviewing children on television.

In the case of the film directors John and Roy Boulting, the death of Roy in 2001 has allowed us to commission and publish a joint article on the brothers, who collaborated so closely throughout their careers, to replace the essay on John alone (d. 1985). Interestingly, our release includes two combinations of husband and first wife: Anthony and Catherine Storr, and Tony and Jean Denton. Three people in this release are included in entries already published in the Oxford DNB: a memoir of Ruth Sanger's life has been combined with that of the geneticist Robert Race (1907-1984); Helen Cherry is now attached to the article on the actor Trevor Howard (1913-1988); and Nancy Sharp now appears in the entry on Sir William Coldstream (1908-1987), the artist and arts administrator.

Forthcoming online releases

The capacity to add material to existing articles is one of the most important and exciting aspects of the Oxford DNB online. We are able to combine the lives of new and old subjects in the dictionary. We shall also be able to amend and update articles as fresh evidence is made available or the incorporation of new historical interpretation is required. In this way the Oxford DNB will develop and evolve through the addition of new lives; by the connection of lives; by the addition of information to a life; and by providing a variety of contextual articles to assist the appreciation and use of the dictionary's content.

May 2005 online update

Our next update to the online edition will be published in May 2005, and will extend the Oxford DNB's coverage of people dying before the year 2000. May's update will provide new articles on subjects active between the thirteenth and twentieth centuries, with a particular focus on women and politics, immigrants and visitors to Britain, and innovators now associated with popular commercial brands.

May's release will also include the first set of corrections and amendments to articles published in September 2004. As ever, we welcome information, with evidence, relating either to errors in the dictionary or to new research which may require an existing article to be revised. Subsequent changes will be incorporated in successive online updates.

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May 2005 preface

Online contents, May 2005

Welcome to the second online update of the Oxford DNB. In our first update, in January 2005, we published biographies of men and women who died in 2001, and in January each year we will continue to extend the dictionary's coverage to a new year of the twenty-first century. However, in two other online updates each year, in May and October, we will add entries on people who lived in any period from the earliest times to the year 2000.

So here we offer new lives of 140 people who left a mark on some aspect of the British past between the thirteenth and twentieth centuries, together with twenty-six new lists and feature articles for ready reference and ways into the dictionary.

Our new material builds on and extends the Oxford DNB's coverage of people from all walks of life, including not only those born in the British Isles, but also people from many other parts of the world who lived in Britain or were connected with British life and culture. In each general update (in May and October), particular attention is given to people who broadly share a common interest or identity. In the present update we highlight three areas: those who came to Britain as exiles or visitors from mainland Europe; women active in political life from the seventeenth century onwards; and entrepreneurs who gave their names to well-known brands. Our remaining biographies are of men and women who left their mark in the arts, diplomacy, the military, trade, religion, and education.

Chronologically the newly included lives range from the soldier and writer Sir Roger Stanegrave (fl. 1276-1336) to the politician Inga-Stina Robson, Baroness Robson of Kiddington (1919-1999). Of the new biographies thirty-nine are of women. The content of our lists is similarly wide-ranging: from rulers of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and high kings of Ireland to captains of the English cricket team and the sporting world champions who appear in the dictionary. Among the eight feature articles are introductions to our new biographies of European visitors, political women, and entrepreneurs, as well as essays on medieval science and twentieth-century English music.

This update also includes corrections and amendments to articles published in 2004—the start of the process of keeping the Oxford DNB's existing material continuously up to date. Just over 800 relatively small changes and additions, authorized by the Oxford DNB's research staff and contributors, have been included among the dictionary's 62 million words. Now and in future these articles will be identified in the citation at the foot of the entry, with previous versions available for consultation on the website. Changes consist of corrections to known factual errors—verified by the research staff and, where necessary, contributors or external reviewers—as well as the addition of new material (for example, life dates of family members) submitted by readers or derived from recent publications. As ever, we welcome information, with evidence, about articles that may need amending. Subsequent changes will be incorporated in successive online updates.

European exiles and visitors to Britain

The first and penultimate entries in the original DNB (Jacques Abbadie, 1654?-1727, and William Zuylestein, 1645-1709) recorded the lives of people who had settled in Britain, having been born on the mainland of Europe. The Oxford DNB included many more such people in its 2004 edition, to which we now add further lives: from the Frenchman Ghillebert de Lannoy (1386-1462), who undertook a diplomatic mission to Scotland, to Georgi Markov (1929 1978), the Bulgarian dissident poisoned by assassins on Waterloo Bridge, London.

Diplomacy is a common theme among the early modern visitors, such as Lodewijk van Brugge (c.1427-1492) and Alessandro Scagli (1592-1641). Others were unwilling residents. Among them was the French prince Charles, duke of Orléans (1394 1465), who was captured at Agincourt and held prisoner in England for twenty-five years, during which time he wrote some of the finest English poetry of the fifteenth century. Legacies of a different kind include that of the gunpowder manufacturer Francis Grueber (c.1657-1730), whose premises exploded with spectacular effect in 1703, and the Spaniard Balthazar Sanchez (d. 1602), England's first known confectioner.

The accession of the Hanoverians in 1714 brought a number of Germans to Britain. Some, like Gottlieb von Bernstorff (1649-1726), came as ministers to the new king, George I, while the bookseller Andreas Linde (d. 1759) catered for London's growing German population. The capital also featured prominently in the English career of the Austrian composer Joseph Haydn (1732 1809). Haydn made two visits in the 1790s from which the outstanding achievement was his twelve 'London' symphonies.

In the nineteenth century Britain gained a reputation for the toleration of political exiles. The period between 1826 (the lifting of wartime legislation restricting foreign aliens) and 1905 (the passing of the Aliens Act) was one of notable freedom for political refugees who arrived in Britain. We often associate these years with radicals who sought exile from conservative European governments. Figures of this type—from the French suffragist Jeanne Deroin (1805-1894) to the Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta (1853-1932)—now join, among others, Marx, Mazzini, and Kropotkin in the Oxford DNB. But some exiles were the victims of progressive European politics. Louis Philippe d'Orléans (1838-1894), pretender to the French throne, fled Paris during the revolution of 1848, and Empress Eugénie (1826-1890), wife of Napoleon III, spent fifty years in Britain following the creation of the Third Republic.

Radicals and conservatives alike often gravitated towards London and the home counties. Manuel II (1889-1932), king of Portugal, fled to Britain after being deposed in 1910 and settled in Twickenham, where he became president of the Piscatorial Society. Empress Eugénie lived at Chislehurst, while Harpenden was the adopted home of Charles Esterhazy (1847-1923), the French army officer whose forgeries led to the Dreyfus affair. The Latvian emigrés whose activities ended with the Sidney Street siege lived in lodgings in the East End of London; Stepniak (1851-1895)—the Russian revolutionary who lived in Shepherd's Bush and was killed by a train in Chiswick—is commemorated at Limpsfield, Surrey, where he also stayed.

Women in politics

Our extended coverage of women in politics includes many who were active long before enfranchisement. Among them are Mary Villiers, countess of Buckingham (c. 1570-1632), a member of the Jacobean court, and Marie Elisabeth de La Fite (1737-1794), who shaped intellectual life at the court of George III. Family connections offered another link to power. Mary Villiers encouraged the court career of her son George, who became the favourite of Charles I in the mid to late 1620s. Carey Mordaunt (c.1658-1709) likewise supported her husband's political career, and cultivated friendships with John Locke and other members of late seventeenth-century whig society.

Women's involvement in extra-parliamentary politics remained strong in the nineteenth century and after the vote in 1918 and 1928, though female suffrage was itself contested by women. The anti-suffragist Fanny Aikin Kortright (1821 1900) gained Queen Victoria's sympathy for her 'strongest aversion to the socalled & most erroneous "Rights of Women"'. Later figures, like Dame Jean Roberts (1895-1988), excelled in local politics, Roberts as Glasgow's first female lord provost. The peace campaigner Peggy Duff (1910-1981) left local politics and became a leading figure in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the late 1950s, while Rotha Lintorn-Orman (1895-1935) founded the British Fascisti in 1923, intending to protect the nation from communism.

Our new coverage also includes parliamentarians. Recent general elections have been followed by reflections on the number of women elected as MPs. The May update completes the dictionary's coverage of all (deceased) British women MPs with new biographies of, among others, the Labour MP Freda Corbet, the Conservative Constance Monks, and the Liberal life peer Baroness Robson of Kiddington.

Household names

A final set of new lives further extends the Oxford DNB's coverage of business and enterprise, a greatly expanded field in the 2004 edition of the dictionary, as Tony Corley's feature on British entrepreneurs and brand names makes clear. Our latest biographies are a fascinating coming together of inventor and products that are now in many cases internationally known. In some cases—as with the cocktail inventor James Pimm (1798 1866) and the parliamentary restaurateur James Bellamy (fl. 1773)—these remain obscure figures whose lives are given interest by the posthumous success of their enterprises. Others did much to promote themselves and their brands in their lifetime, though few went as far as the patent medicine entrepreneur William Reynard Varney (1866 1933), who changed his name to William Henry Veno, most probably to invest his product with the same allure enjoyed by that of the fruit salt-maker James Crossley Eno.

As these new lives show, many entrepreneurs combined ambition with sound business practice. But some also enjoyed good fortune, as did John Lea (1791-1874) and William Perrins (1793-1867), inventors of a savoury sauce which originated with a barrel of inedible condiment later re-opened by chance. Many, like the scale manufacturer Thomas Avery (1813-1894), also relied on family members to establish and support their business. Often they became local politicians or philanthropists. Avery, for example, was twice mayor of Birmingham and promoted education establishments for the dissenting tradition. Occasionally, as with the sugar refiner Abram Lyle (1820-1891), religious commitment was reflected in the brand itself. Lyle's best-known product, golden syrup, still comes in its famous green tin bearing the image of a lion's carcase and the epithet 'Out of the strong came forth sweetness', taken from an Old Testament story from Judges 14. The importance of image is also evident in the work of the artist John Gilroy (1898-1985), who was responsible for the cheery workmen and zoo animals which featured in Guinness advertising from the 1930s.

Local heroes

Other new lives are significant for their regional importance, among them Henry Jenner (1848-1934), promoter of the Cornish language; Warren James (1792-1841), defender of the customary rights of the Forest of Dean miners; and John Oxtoby (1767-1830), the Yorkshire evangelist who reputedly spent six hours a day on his knees in prayer, earning him the nickname Praying Johnny. Through self-starvation Sarah Jacob (1857-1869), a farmer's daughter from Carmarthenshire, achieved national celebrity as 'the Welsh Fasting Girl'. Lea and Perrins (of sauce fame) are, of course, closely associated with the city of Worcester where they lived and worked. The inclusion of Thomas Raynold (d. 1559), bishop-designate of nearby Hereford, now completes the dictionary's coverage of the Tudor episcopate.

The importance of war and military values for medieval society is apparent in new entries on the soldier Sir Thomas Dagworth (d. 1350) and the crusader Sir John Ryvere (d. after 1364), who became one of the papacy's leading sources of information on the Holy Land. War also brings together two people who received the highest awards for gallantry in later conflicts. In 1854 Charles Davis Lucas (1834-1912), a naval officer serving in the Crimean war, threw overboard a shell which had landed on his ship's deck, the first act for which the Victoria Cross was awarded. In 1940 an air-raid warden, Thomas Hopper Alderson (1903-1965), rescued civilians trapped in bombed-out buildings in Bridlington, Yorkshire, and for his actions became the first recipient of the George Cross, Britain's highest award for bravery by a civilian or service person in a non-combat role.

Our next online update

Our next online update will be published in October 2005, when we highlight modern Irish lives, early modern women writers, and children and adults associated with childhood. October's update also includes a new type of article, the 'navigation article', which focuses on historical groups from all periods. Written by expert authors, navigation articles discuss established groups—people who came together for political, literary, artistic, military, religious, and other purposes—to show connections between lives and to explain common endeavours. Our first set of navigation articles includes essays on the enforcers of Magna Carta, the Cambridge Platonists, and modern political societies such as the Adullamites and the Keep Left group.

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October 2005 preface

New online update, October 2005

Welcome to the third online update of the Oxford DNB, which appears shortly after the anniversary of the dictionary's publication in September 2004.

Over the last year we have been extending and developing the online edition of the Oxford DNB. In our first update, in January 2005, we published biographies of men and women who died in 2001, and in January each year we will extend the dictionary's coverage to the next year in the twenty-first century. In May we turned to people from the earliest times to the year 2000, and we continue this focus in the October 2005 update.

Here we offer new biographies of 98 people who left a mark on some aspect of the British past between the ninth and twentieth centuries, plus 58 new theme articles (comprising 51 lists and 7 features) for ready reference and paths into the dictionary. In addition the October update sees a new development in the Oxford DNB's scholarly content: 'reference groups' on well-known historical groups from all periods. Reference groups, of which 30 examples are published here, allow expert authors to look beyond the dictionary as a collection of individuals and to make connections between people, so as to trace the interactions and associations that have shaped British life.

As in May, the new biographies in this update extend the Oxford DNB's existing coverage of people from all walks of life. Here we highlight three areas in which subjects share a common interest or identity: children and adults associated with childhood; women writers from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; and modern Irish lives, covering those active in the formative and early years of the independent Irish state (which remained part of the Commonwealth until 1949). Our remaining biographies are of those who left their mark in exploration, technology, politics, religion, sport, and the arts. Chronologically the newly included lives range from Conchobar mac Donnchada (d. 833), high-king of Ireland, to the 1960s children's television presenter Christopher Trace (1933-1992). Of the 98 new lives 33 are of women. Our new theme material is similarly broad: reference lists cover the political leaders of Britain's former colonies, while features provide introductions to new biographies as well as anniversary essays on Trafalgar and the Gunpowder Plot.

Children, childhood, and literature

The great majority of men and women in the Oxford DNB gain a place for activities during adulthood. However, a small number of people are noteworthy for events or achievements that occurred at a far earlier stage of life. The 2004 edition of the dictionary included over 20 historically significant children from all periods, to which we now add further examples.

Some of our new child subjects, such as Salomon Pavy (1588-1602), displayed exceptional talents; in Pavy's case as a boy actor commemorated with an epitaph by Ben Jonson—a tribute Jonson paid to only two other actors, Richard Burbage and William Shakespeare. Other children leave their mark not for their actions but their image. Sarah Moulton (1783 1795) is little known by this name, but her pet name Pinkie is readily associated with Thomas Lawrence's celebrated portrait. Two more children in this update are remembered for their unwitting contribution to evolutionary biology. As the eldest children of Charles Darwin, William and Annie Darwin became the focus of their father's research into human development. Darwin's study of William resulted in 'A biographical sketch of an infant' (1877) which traced his son's development from birth to the age of three, and makes William one of the youngest subjects of English life writing. The death of Annie Darwin aged ten also prompted a remarkably candid memoir from her father, whose subsequent rejection of Christianity is said to have been hastened by his daughter's death.

Other newcomers are remembered not for their youth but for the pleasure they brought to children as adult performers. Without the charm of Christopher Trace (1933-1992) it is doubtful whether Blue Peter would have become a classic of British children's television. Likewise the success of The Magic Roundabout owed everything to Eric Thompson (1922-1982), who adapted the French original to English sensibilities and so scored a hit with children and adults alike. Scottish readers may have grown up listening to Elizabeth Dodd's radio stories about Tammy Troot, and many more will be familiar with the work of Roger Hargreaves (1935-1988), a copywriter whose workplace doodles led to the creation of the Mr Men characters, which Hargreaves successfully developed into an international brand.

Authors like Hargreaves made their name by writing. However several people in this update are known because of what others wrote about them or for what they themselves set down in manuscripts published after their death. Our knowledge of Dafydd ab Ieuan ab Iorwerth, a late fifteenth-century Cistercian abbot who became bishop of St Asaph, owes much to two bards who stayed in his monastery. Robert Reynes, a close contemporary of Dafydd, was a Norfolk parish official whose commonplace book gives a detailed account of the beliefs of a countryman from the late middle ages.

The scholarly value of private writing is especially evident in recent histories of early modern women. The Oxford DNB reflected these newly discovered lives in 2004 and we continue this theme here with biographies of women like Unton Dering (d. 1676), whose correspondence with her husband reveals a close involvement in political life; during the 1640s, for example, Lady Dering acted as her husband's political agent. The letters and notebooks of Alice L'Estrange (1585-1656), Katherine Paston (1578-1629), and Lady Rachael Fane (1613-1680) similarly demonstrate the role of Stuart gentlewomen as estate managers, accountants, and educators. Others, like Anne Cornwallis, countess of Argyll (d. 1635), combined possible authorship with religious and literary patronage, while very different talents were displayed by Winifred Wigmore (1585-1657) and Margaret Hamilton, Lady Belhaven (d. in or after 1697) as a schoolmistress and medical practitioner respectively.

Local and imperial lives

The dictionary's interest in people of regional significance continues in this update with biographies of, among others, the heroine Mary Ann Rogers (1855 1899), a stewardess who died rescuing passengers from the Stella, which sank off Guernsey. Her actions were later commemorated by a memorial in Southampton, verse from the poet laureate, and a window in Liverpool's Anglican cathedral. Robert Cadman's death at Shrewsbury in 1740 was equally premature, though perhaps less of a surprise. Cadman became a celebrated 'ropeslider' whose descent from the cupola of St Paul's Cathedral earned him the title 'the famed Icarus of the rope' before his fall and death brought an end to the 'flying craze' of the 1730s.

Others are remembered for a more learned legacy: the politician and art patron Sir Watkin Williams Wynn (1749-1789), for example, sponsored artistic tours of north Wales; the journalist Allen Clarke (1863-1935) combined social reform with efforts to preserve Lancashire culture and dialect, while at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk Basil Brown (1888-1977) discovered an Anglo-Saxon burial ship in 1937, and so made one of Britain's most significant archaeological discoveries. Meanwhile, George Meason's mid-nineteenth-century essays on the railway network encouraged travellers to use a technology that connected the British regions as none had previously done. Among earlier commentators on regional and national culture are the fourteenth-century Florentine merchant Francesco di Balducci Pegolotti, whose trader's handbook is an essential source for the medieval English wool trade, and the Frenchman Étienne Perlin (fl. 1553-1558), whose praise for the wealth and beauty of Britain was balanced by criticism of the English as vain and drunken.

Particular attention is paid in this update to Irish lives. The high-king Conchobar mac Donnchada lived in the early middle ages. Others were active during the formative years of the independent Irish state and are drawn from many aspects of early twentieth-century Irish society. Politicians include Laurence Ginnell (1852-1923), who championed the rights of smallholders, and Helena Concannon (1878-1952), who promoted the nationalist cause in her historical writing. Critics of such views include Ellen Cuffe, countess of Desart (1857-1933), who advocated the union and the Gaelic revival, principally through the promotion of local industries in Kilkenny. Among others who shaped Gaelic culture are the philologist Richard Best (1872-1959), the scholar Patrick Joyce (1827-1914), and the Gaelic footballer Sam Maguire (1877-1927) after whom the sport's premier trophy is named. New biographies of the diplomats John Hearne (1893-1969) and Joseph Walshe (1886-1956) and of the playwright and broadcaster Denis Johnston (1901-1984) also highlight those who negotiated and challenged Éire's neutrality during the Second World War.

Other Irish-born subjects, among them Eliza Lynch (1835-1886), made their name overseas. In Paris Lynch met and became the mistress of Francisco Solano López, who inherited the presidency of Paraguay, where Lynch imported aspects of European culture and became involved in the country's ferocious war with Brazil. Fellow international travellers include David of Ashby, the thirteenth-century missionary to the Mongols who accompanied their embassy to the Council of Lyons, and Henry Smeathman (1742-1786), who pioneered the study of termitology in Sierra Leone.

In addition to new biographies we continue our international focus with 51 reference lists, located in the 'themes' area of the website. These provide comprehensive information on the governors, the chief ministers and premiers under responsible government, and the post-independence heads of state and heads of government, of the 47 countries which made up the British empire. Lists range from India (in population the largest) to Kiribati and Tuvalu (the smallest), with links to subject biographies where political leaders have dictionary entries. The update also adds guides to the governors of Gibraltar; the governors and governing officers of Tangier during the period of English rule; and the seneschals and lieutenants of Gascony, and commanding officers at Calais, included in the Oxford DNB.

Connecting people: groups in history

The primary purpose of the Oxford DNB is to present memoirs of noteworthy people in British history. But the dictionary may also be used as a historical database which links people through their actions and common endeavours. With this in mind, the October update includes 30 'reference groups'—a new type of article to highlight connections between men and women who shared similar enterprises as members of well-known groups or associations in British history. Written by expert authors, these articles define established historical networks, provide a concise account of the aims and significance of a particular group, and give full details of all known members or participants. Biographies for those men and women in the Oxford DNB are linked for further reading.

The categories discussed in the first set of reference groups range from the sixth-century Gregorian missionaries who launched the conversion of England to Roman Christianity to the Suez group of MPs who criticized Anthony Eden's handling of the 1956 crisis. Along the way, our authors focus on politics (among others, the baronial enforcers of Magna Carta, the Whig junto, and the Keep Left group); religious and intellectual life (the Cambridge Platonists, the Feathers Tavern petitioners, and the Rainbow Circle); and culture, sporting life, and science (the Kit Cat Club, Ealing Studios, and the Society of Civil Engineers). Further groups will be added in the May and October updates of each year, allowing us to create a wide-ranging and comprehensive set of essays for reference and research.

New research opportunities

In addition to our new academic content this update includes several significant developments in the dictionary's appearance and usefulness.

From October the dictionary is more closely integrated with authoritative external sources. We have increased the number of Oxford DNB subjects whose articles are linked to the National Register of Archives: now almost 18,000 of our biographies are directly connected to the register's listing of relevant archival materials. In addition we now include links to the Royal Historical Society bibliography, which provides a comprehensive listing of published research on British and Irish history. There are more than 5000 links to the RHS bibliography, each of which offers an authoritative list of relevant further reading; click on the link to see William Gladstone's RHS bibliography entry.

One of the dictionary's most striking features is the images, researched and selected by the National Portrait Gallery, London, which currently accompany one in five biographies. Our association with the NPG has continued since publication, focusing principally on the selection of images for new people included since January 2005. But October's update also develops the selection of likenesses by republishing 750 of the dictionary's existing black and white portrait images in colour. Such developments—coupled with the addition of images for people previously without a portrait—will continue in future updates.

Lastly, we continue to update and amend biographies published in 2004 in order to keep the Oxford DNB's existing material in step with new discoveries. Just over 500 changes and additions, authorized by the research staff and contributors, have been included among the dictionary's 63 million words. As ever, we welcome information, with evidence, about articles that may need amending following new research.

And in the light of these online developments it is fitting that October's update also includes biographies of two men—John Simmons (1902-1985), pioneer of office computer use, and Alec Reeves (1902-1971), inventor of pulse code modulation—who were central to the computer and digital revolutions that have brought such changes to scholarly research and publishing.

The Oxford DNB's next contribution to the 'information age' takes place in January 2006 when we publish an update dedicated to men and women who died in the year 2002.

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