Drawn from the archives of The Dictionary of National Biography, this collection offers nearly 200 sharply drawn profiles of the men and women who have helped shape British national life this century. Full of insight and wit, and often surprisingly frank, these vignettes provide definitive portraits of their subjects by people who knew them personally. Writers, artists, and musicians rub shoulders with scientists, industrialists, politicians, and soldiers in this highly readable celebration of national endeavour and achievement. From Laura Ashley to Evelyn Waugh, Tony Hancock to Bertrand Russell, this volume offers some of the riches of The Dictionary of National Biography in a single volume. One of the delights of this entertaining anthology is that many of the mini-biographies are written by people who themselves are prominent in public life and who write from personal knowledge of their subjects. Discover Kingsley Amis on Sir John Betjeman, Stephen Spender on W.H. Auden, Ian Gilmour on R.A. Butler, Richard Ellmann on T.S. Eliot, Alan Bennett on Russell Harty, and David Cecil on Virginia Woolf.