The dust-wrapper of this marvellous book, which contains tens of thousands of historical facts, tells us that it is ´perhaps the last one-man reference work in the tradition of Dr. Johnson´. By that it does not just imply that Charles Arnold-Baker did all the compilation himself – he did, and it took him 30 years – but that what might otherwise be a collection of dry facts is laced with his forthright opinions. The result is a book that will enlighten, amuse and inform.' Concentrating on British  history, but including many items  concerning our imperial and continental roles, the book is the perfect antidote for an age that seems to have given up general knowledge.

Almost any historical query that might be thrown up in conversation, by reading, while watching television or listening to the radio, is likely to have its answer here: and while you search for it, you will find other gems you will wish you had always known. For example, the district of London where the Post Office´s main sorting depot is located, Mount Pleasant, is a prominent example of the ancient sense of humour of the English; it was so named because it once housed the capital´s rubbish dump. And whereas now Members of Parliament, if they wish to leave the Commons, have to apply for the Chiltern Hundreds or the Stewardship of the Manor of Northstead, until the creation of the Irish Free State they could also apply for the wonderful-sounding Eascheatorship of Munster. Or, you will learn that the habit of terming academic women ‘bluestockings’ arose from the dress code for men in 18th-century France. The salons of several grand ladies in Paris announced that, instead of playing cards for recreation, they would have literary discussions. The occasions were informal, the men as a result dressed down in blue stockings; the women were tarred with their brush. Then you may not know that the splendid medieval spectacle of trial by combat was not, in fact, abolished until 1819: and only then because somebody, noting it was stiull legal, tried to have one in 1818. And in the entry on gout (which presumably qualifies for inclusion on the grounds that it is an historical disease), the author reveals that it was ‘virtually unknown in Scotland or Ireland’.

His occasional whimsies are not always for the faint-hearted. In his note on St. Ursula, the daughter of a British prince of either the 3rd or 5th century, the author observes that she ‘with 11,000 other virgins went to Rome and was slaughtered by the Hungarians at Cologne’. He adds that ‘the meaning of this tradition is unclear’. His item on the history of brothels in Britain is one of the more comprehensive to be published on this ill-documented subject. But it is the author´s robust sense of propriety that will most captivate the reader. In discussing the origins and uses of the word ‘lord’, for example, he writes that ‘in this work it is used to distinguish a British baron from the much commoner and less important foreign variety’. He is much aggrieved by the dilution of British traditions and way of life: he abhors the fact that many of our historic weights and measures were ‘criminalised’ in 1995, but, proudly observing the national resistance movement, says they are nonetheless often still in use. Similar strictures are applied to the decimal coinage: generations yet unborn for whom the shilling and the half-crown are matters of mystery will find this work invaluable.

Arnold-Baker has, as befits a man who spent part of the war as one of Churchill’s bodyguard, a certain view of people in public life. The former Labour minister Patrick Gordon-Walker, who never fulfilled his potential, has this explained away in the sentence ‘he was fundamentally too decent’. The same view does not, it appears, apply to the present Prime Minister, who, we are told, leads a government ‘that is only nominally Conservative… there was scarecely anything with which it did not interfere’. The author has, perhaps knowing more than the rest of us, chosen to write of it in the past tense.

Given that this is one man’s work, albeit over 30 years, it is a stunning achievement. In nearly 1,400 pages it is packed with almost everything you need to know about any historical person, place, idea, movement, dynasty and event. Those of you not sated by the main text will find, at the end, a list of ‘selected warlike events’ carefully stating the winners – refreshingly often British. It is, to conclude, the perfect bedside book, and every home should have one.' -– Simon Heffer in The Daily Mail, 12 April 1997.