SPLENDID AS IT is in other ways, Angus Calder's latest book proves of precious little use as a reference tool; its rubric is so broad, and its inclusive principle so idiosyncratic, that you'd seldom know when to consult it. Although alphabetically organised, it's not so much a dctionary as a biographical anthology concocted with polymathic enthusiasm and published con amore. As such, I won't hear a word said against it.

From the sprawling style of its jacket design to the pawky wit of its prose, there seems to hover over this work the spirit of Calder's erstwhile collaborator, Alasdair Gray. Subtitled '101 Brief but Essential Lives', it seems indeed a hybrid of Aubrey and the DNB: in the author's own