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Many countries have biographical dictionaries. Britain has led the way with L. Stephen and S. Lee’s Dictionary of National Biography (Smith, Elder&Co., 1885), which was kept up to date by a series of supplements and completely revised and re-edited to create the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (OUP, 2004). It is available in print and can be searched online on a subscription basis at www.oup.com/oxforddnb, though it should also be available at good libraries. You can search not just under the names of the subjects, but also under any other names (such as wives, sons-in-law, and so on) appearing in the articles and also by topic. So if you want to find any biographies mentioning something like ice cream, you can.

The DNB has been fully updated by a huge team of writers, including me, and the biographies include, where known, dates and places of birth, death, marriage and burial and any known details of parents, family origins, spouses, and offspring and is thus a formidable genealogical as well as biographical source.

Many people were important or well known in their time but are not considered so by posterity. There have been many biographical dictionaries past and present, not least Who’s Who (OUP), which has been published annually since 1897, and its accompanying Who Was Who (OUP), concerning the deceased, both of which are combined on a CD-Rom version. Here you will find the great and the good, from holders of public office to captains of industry, the top brass in the armed forces, the upper echelons of the clergy, and also writers, artists, editors and a host of others. Brief details are provided of dates of birth, marriage, death, parents and offspring. It is more useful for providing a date of birth so you can seek a birth certificate than in actually providing adequate genealogical details in its own right – but, of course, the biographical information it contains is marvellous.

From hip to history:Linda McCartney’s tragically early death means she has joined Princess Diana in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Besides these, there are many further biographical dictionaries relating to specific groups in society, like the armed forces or religious groups, which are discussed in the appropriate chapters.