The very big read of Britain's who's who

At 60 million words the new British 'Dictionary of National Biography' will be the longest book ever published in English. John Preston discovers how it took 12 years' hard labour to produce – and meets the man behind the ultimate who's who


Wednesday, January 14, 2004, at a printing works in Somerset, a thin, bespectacled man in an ill-fitting suit stood in front of a computer keyboard, looking mildly apprehensive. "Go on then, push the button," someone called out.

And so he did. To begin with, nothing happened. The thin, bespectacled man looked even more apprehensive. Then, with a soft whoosh, the printing press behind him burst into life. Huge white sheets of paper – bigger than bedsheets – began shooting out of one end, all of them covered in columns of black type. It was the moment an extraordinary and heroic dream came to fulfilment. After 12 years' hard labour – after crises, controversy and tragedy – the first complete new Dictionary of National Biography for more than a century was finally taking shape.

At this point I will hurl a few statistics your way. Frankly, there's no point trying to duck; you will be flattened anyway. The new DNB will be the longest book ever published in English. It will consist of 60 volumes comprising more than 50,000 entries. Total number of words: 60 million.

If you are thinking of buying a set, it'll cost you £7,500 – with a knockdown pre-publication offer for cheapskates of just £6,500. However, a plump wallet is not the only requirement for ownership. You'll also need plenty of shelf space to accommodate it – 11-feet to be precise. And if you have some brawn to go with your brains, then so much the better. Each volume weighs in at around 2kg, with all 60 tipping the scales at more than 20 stone (127kg).

To be in the DNB, a collection of biographies of men and women who have shaped all aspects of British life, is the ultimate proof that you have made it. The caprices of fashion count for nothing here; only stayers make it, not pieces of ephemeral chaff. But there is a catch. To be eligible for inclusion, you must also have pegged it – and before the end of 2001, the cut-off point for the new edition.

Yet death seems a small price to pay for a place in such august company. Here, within its pages, lie the great, the good, the fairly iffy and the downright depraved. The DNB doesn't sit in judgment on its subjects; no one is booted out for gross moral turpitude. It simply asks that they should have made a significant impact on British life.

Close scrutiny

Before candidates can gain admission, they will have had their qualifications scrutinised by a panel of experts in their particular field. Satisfy the stringent requirements of the panel and you're almost there. However, one final hurdle remains. You must also be approved by the thin, bespectacled man with his finger on the button.

This is Brian Harrison. He is the editor of the DNB and the nearest thing there is to St Peter on Earth. Without his say-so, you cannot pass through the Gates of the Departed. Immortality will be denied you.

Yet as Harrison is the first to admit, someone else should have been setting the presses rolling. Another man should have been reaping the glory. Instead, the Dictionary claimed him – just as it has claimed others over its long history, ruining their health and driving them to the brink of insanity.

It was in 1992 that Colin Matthew, a professor of 19th-century history at Christ Church, Oxford, and the editor of 13 volumes of Gladstone's Diaries, was put in charge of compiling the new DNB. "He is still under 50," wrote the managing director of the Oxford University Press, recommending Matthew to his directors. "He has obviously got the stamina for the long haul."

No one disputed that a new Dictionary was way overdue. The original DNB had been published in 1900, edited by Leslie Stephen, father of Virginia Woolf, and funded by a Victorian philanthropist called George Smith, who had made a fortune from importing mineral water. Since then there had been various supplements, but no complete, shelf-bending set. Now that was about to change. The Government, in the form of the British Academy, put up £3 million. The Oxford University Press committed £19 million.

Initially, it was thought that the project would take 25 years. That seemed long enough – with a deadline sufficiently far away for no one to have to get panicky. This, however, was when Matthew lobbed his first giant spanner into the works.

To general astonishment – indeed, to eye-popping incredulity – he announced that he intended to complete the new DNB in just 12 years. In libraries and common rooms all over the country people scoffied and muttered that it could never be done. After all, just look at the precedents. The French and the Italians had tried to compile a dictionary of their own national biography, and neither had made it beyond the letter G. Twelve years? Why, it was preposterous.

Matthew, however, had done his homework. He'd seen how Leslie Stephen had tied himself to a punishing schedule that required him to bring out four volumes every year for 18 years.

More women

It was this, Matthew reckoned, that had broken Stephen's spirit and had prompted despairing references to the project in his journal. Matthew would not make the same mistake. Instead of publishing individual volumes as they were completed, he decided to bring the whole lot out at the same time: in 2004.

A 50-strong editorial team was appointed, along with 400 specialist advisers, and in a handsome Georgian house in St Giles, Oxford, work began. From the word go Matthew was determined that the new dictionary wasn't going to be a "roll-call of the Establishment".

This time round there would be more women – they had comprised just four per cent of entries in 1900 – and categories would be expanded to reflect changes in British society. Also, there would be no fudging about people's private lives.

The old DNB pursued a policy of shuddering discretion. So much so that what was omitted became almost as significant as what was included. In his review of a supplement published in the 1940s, Evelyn Waugh wrote: "If an estate agent does not mention the view from the west bedrooms, you can be sure there is a sewage farm immediately below them." But now there were to be no omissions. Views from the west bedrooms would be included, along with equally revealing details of a subject's wealth at death.

Then came the toughest nut of all: the selection procedure. In one sense this was quite straightforward. Partly to save time, and partly because he didn't feel he had any business interfering with Stephen's original choice, Matthew decreed that everyone who was in the old DNB would automatically be in the new one - albeit with updated entries. However, there would also be 13,500 newly selected people from all historical periods.

So who would be given the nod, and who would fall by the wayside? Some people ambled straight in, unchallenged: Prime Ministers, for instance. Others, though, were less clear-cut. Panels were convened to discuss marginal cases. Lists of possibles were submi