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Here you'll find details of the dictionary's latest update (May 2012)—plus news of monthly features, our bi-weekly biography podcast, and topical Lives of the Day.
The Oxford DNB online is updated every January, May, and September with new biographies and reference articles. Previous updates
You may also be interested in: Selected reviews and Prizes awarded to the Oxford DNB
Latest online update: May 2012
Our May 2012 online update includes biographies of 108 people active between the 12th & 21st centuries. Full list of new lives.
Highlights from the May update include:
- British Olympians and sporting figures: athletes Maureen Gardner and Donald Finlay from the 1948 London Games; rower William Kinnear and swimmer Jennie Fletcher, medallists in 1912; plus Britain’s pioneering long-distance runner, Violet Piercy.
- Londoners: Henry Croft, the original pearly king, Thomas Bludworth, mayor at the Great Fire, and ‘Burlington Bertie from Bow’, Ella Shields.
- Anthems and national songs: composers of ‘Flower of Scotland’ and Scotland the Brave’; God Bless Ireland, and the Manx anthem, ‘O Land of my Birth’.
Editor's Introduction : Highlights from the new update : May 2012 update
May 2012
- 24 May: New update, British Olympians and historical Londoners.
- Written in the stars: astronomers whose names live on in space.
- Lives of the day: May anniversaries include the bicentenary of the births of poet Robert Browning (7th) and creator of nonsense, Edward Lear (12th). In a similar vein, 31 May marks 175 years since the death of the clown Joseph Grimaldi. It’s also 200 years since the deaths of John Bellingham (18th), the assassin of prime minister Spencer Percival, and the literary scholar and friend of Dr Johnson, Edmond Malone (25th). Find out who’s currently in the Lives of the Week gallery, and sign up for the life of the day.
- Oxford DNB podcasts: new biographies, and some old favourites, as downloads and podcasts: this month, pigeons in the coop & bodies in the library.
- Daily lives, regular podcast episodes, and other historical news is also available via
April 2012
- Loss of the Titanic: April 1912
- Lives of the day: April anniversaries include 150 years since the birth of Dickens’s companion, Nelly Ternan (25th), and centenaries of the death of author Bram Stoker (20th) and of the birth of singer Kathleen Ferrier (22nd). It’s 75 years since the first test of Frank Whittle’s jet engine (12th), while the centenary of the Titanic disaster is marked with the stories of passengers and crew. In between there’s a king of foolers for 1st, Flashman author George Fraser (2nd), and Mary II, wife of William on 30th. Find out who’s currently in the Lives of the Week gallery, and sign up for the life of the day.
- Oxford DNB podcasts: new biographies, and some old favourites, as downloads and podcasts: this month, family saloons and female soldiers.
- Daily lives, regular podcast episodes, and other historical news is also available via
March 2012
- Death at the South Pole: Robert Scott, 1912
- Lives of the day: March anniversaries include 150 years since the birth of May Morris (25th), designer and wife of William, and the centenary of the birth of newspaper editor, David Astor (5th); March 2012 also marks 100 years since the deaths of Captains Oates (16th) and Scott (29th) in the Antarctic. In between there's Queen Emma (7th), the Sotho chief Moshoeshoe (11th), and the smoking diarist, Simon Gray (13th). Find out who’s currently in the Lives of the Week gallery, and sign up for the life of the day.
- Oxford DNB podcasts: new biographies, and some old favourites, as downloads and podcasts: this month, W.E. & VC.
- Daily lives, regular podcast episodes, and other historical news is also available via
February 2012
- Charles Dickens is 200: the man and his circle.
- Lives of the day: February's anniversaries include the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens (7th) and 150 years since the death of the Pre-Raphaelites’ muse, Elizabeth Siddall. Other lives this month include the Romantic poet John Keats (14th), US president James Madison (20th), and the writer Lawrence Durrell (27th). Find out who’s currently in the Lives of the Week gallery, and sign up for the life of the day.
- Oxford DNB podcasts: new biographies, and some old favourites, as downloads and podcasts: this month, treason & plot and Jeeves & Wooster.
- Daily lives, regular podcast episodes, and other historical news is also available via
January 2012
- New update: the January 2012 update adds biographies of 217 people who died in 2008.
- Lives of the day: January's lives include dramatist and actor, Harold Pinter (5th), the political philosopher R. H. Tawney (16th), Nelson's lover Emma Hamilton (21st), writer Somerset Maugham (25th), and the composer Frederick Delius (29th) on the 150th anniversary of his birth. Find out who’s currently in the Lives of the Week gallery, and sign up for the life of the day.
- Watch editor Lawrence Goldman talk about the January update and what's to come in 2012. Watch update video.
- Oxford DNB podcasts: new biographies, and some old favourites, as downloads and podcasts: this month, Mornington Crescent and Tattenham Corner.
- Daily lives, regular podcast episodes, and other historical news is also available via
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Christopher Howse, Daily Telegraph, 12 April 2010
- 14 November 2009: the ODNB is one of the Times’s 100 ‘best books’ published between 2000 and 2010.
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- In praise of ... the Dictionary of National Biography
‘The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is one of the last great products of the age of print, now giving way with some grace to the digital era … Access, via library subscriptions, is free for almost anyone who wants it, on a home computer. The DNB team even email out a life of the day, an erudite way to clutter your inbox.’
The Guardian, Leader page, 8 January 2007
- 'The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has refreshed and fortified our sense of what can still be meant by the collective endeavour of "scholarship"'.
Stefan Collini, London Review of Books, 20 Jan 2005
Read Stefan Collini's LRB review.
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2005: Besterman/McColvin Medal for the outstanding electronic reference work of the year: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
2005: Dartmouth Medal for the creation of a reference work of outstanding quality and significance: American Library Association
2005: Special citation: National Book Critics Circle Awards
2005: Trustees' Award for the promotion of history: Longman-History Today Awards
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