The Oxford companion to British history - John Cannon

The Britain of 55 BC was a very different place to the Britain of 2002. The main preoccupation back then was fear of Roman invasion; there was no genetically modified food, no New Labour, no Mad Cow's Disease, and no Euro, all things which are making history today. The Oxford Companion to British History, first published in 1997, described in Writing Magazine as 'the ultimate in reference books', details and analyses the people and events that have shaped and defined life in Britain over 2,000 years of political, social, and cultural change. In over 4,000 entries, under the editorial guidance of John Cannon, over 100 distinguished contributors offer a wealth of information and insight into the social, political, economic, scientific, cultural, and military aspects of the history of Britain. As well as the expected kings, queens, leaders, and battles, topics as diverse as gibbeting (the exhibiting of corpses of executed criminals in public), Eadgyth (the mistress of Harold II), truck (the payment of wages in food and kind) and buses (road vehicles carrying passengers by short stages on fixed routes) can be found within the A-Z entries.;Now available for the first time in paperback, the text has been updated and revised to take into account the events, people, and institutions that have made their mark over the past four years. The new and re-written entries that make this revised edition also broaden the already extensive coverage further, bringing the text in line with the year 2002. New and re-written entries include: Culture: advertising People: Paddy Ashdown, Betty Boothroyd, Gordon Brown, Wilkie Collins, Clement Davies, John Dee, Iain Duncan Smith, William Etty, Benjamin Franklin, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Gissing, Joseph Grimond, William Hague, John Harrison, Charles Kennedy, Dan Leno, L. S.;Lowry, James Molyneaux, George Robey, David Rothesay, David Steel, William Stubbs, Jeremy Thorpe, David Trimble, Prince William Places: American cemetery, Burley-on-the-hill, diocese of Chester, Clarendon palace, Kenwood, diocese of Liverpool, Mozambique, Pembroke castle, Yorkshire East Riding Issues: democracy, devolution, maps, referenda, terrorism Events: battle of New Orleans, Nootka Sound crisis, Ochakov crisis In addition to A-Z entries the Companion includes a section of maps showing Roman Britain, Anglo-Saxon England and early Scotland, Wales in the 13th century, the Angevin Empire, English and Welsh dioceses in 1543, the English Civil War, British and Irish counties, urban development, Europe in the First World War, the retreat from empire, and German hegemony in the Second World War. There are also a number of genealogies of the Saxons, Danes, and Normans, Glyndwr's ancestry, the houses of Lancaster and York, the Tudors and the Stuarts, the Stuart and Hanoverian lines, and Victoria and her descendants. There is also a subject index, which groups headwords into thematic batches to provide an alternative way of accessing the entries.