An hilarious collection of entries on an array of interesting British folk. There's some famous people who drank a lot (Oliver Reed & Keith Moon both feature), some rather eccentric people, like the chap who hated people sitting near him on the train and would check his temperature anally every five minutes until people left him alone, and some out and out gangsters (Frankie Fraser, the Kray twins and others).

Donaldson writes well and fills out this brick of a book with many eyebrow raising entries, like "lavatory attendants who subsequently became celebrated publishers. See Carrington, Charles", and Major-General Orde Wingate's habit of holding briefing sessions in the nude. Sarah, the duchess of York, cracks a mention, as does Prince Philip. And, I even learnt that "twang" was an eighteenth century slang word for a prostitute's associate whose job it was to pick the client's pockets while he was having intercourse upright in a doorway. To think that some people find reading a waste of time. ( )

Nothing to do with the Brewer of "Phrase and Fable", this alphabetical compendium of biographical entries is overweighted by a preponderance of tedious East End villains with nothing noteworthy about them but a tendency to extreme violence. However, there are brighter nuggets among the dross. No references are quoted, which leads me to believe that some entries ave been compiled from newspaper reports for which accuracy was not the first consideration. ( )