On National Biographies

‘Biography dictionary criticised for lack of new minority ethnic entrants.’ It’s the kind of article I might share on Facebook, or proudly forward to a politically aware friend, or at least grunt my agreement at before clicking out and immediately forgetting it. Except I’m the publicist for the biographical dictionary under accusation, so I wasn’t that keen for anyone else to see it.

This slight on the reputation of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography felt like a personal affront — I was frustrated after a week of defending it, out of professional pride as much as conviction (I clearly take my job too seriously), and also with the bloody mindedness of journalists on the hunt for click-bait. I was jaded from a week of provocative emails, asking me was it true, was it correct that, all the while rebuffing official comments and refusing to read the long, complex and nuanced FAQs I sent them explaining the criteria for inclusion. No, that’s not even fair. They read them, that much is clear from the articles. They just didn’t like them.

The first article implied that several minority voice groups had accused the ODNB of whitewashing history (in fact the same groups called me asking for a comment having been approached for one by the Guardian). Yet it then went on to give a detailed and distinguished history of the ODNB. If anything it enforced the message that the ODNB is ‘regarded as the pantheon of British history’. A day later appeared the headline the following headline:

This second article was much more unsettling. It undermined the project as a whole and, seemingly without realising it, questioned the very existence of a national biography in the first place.

It begins with praise:

Life would be much the poorer without a national biography, a collection of the lives of people who have “left their mark on an aspect of national life, worldwide”. The public spirited endeavour of the Oxford University Press that first revised and now regularly updates the Victorian concept of a Dictionary of National Biography can only be cheered.

Yet it goes on to question the very foundations upon which the dictionary was founded, and continues to operate:

Lists are probably the quickest way to provoke an argument, and arguing over who has shaped national life is part of the business of establishing what it should like. Biggs and Berzovsky may look questionable; but neither looks anywhere near as questionable as a single man left out. There is no Nelson Mandela. No matter that he was not a Briton, nor ever lived here. For millions of white Britons, he redefined what it meant to be black; he reshaped attitudes to apartheid; and the story of the life he lived is a vivid influence on the unfinished business of how Britons think about the history of empire.

There is an admirable journalistic stubbornness on display here. Since I had personally emailed the author of this piece to explain that ‘with some rare exceptions, entrants into the ODNB must have been born or lived the majority of their lives in Britain’, I take it that the challenge this article makes is not to the selection process behind this most recent update, but is in fact a challenge to the foundational criteria behind the dictionary itself. The question posed, at its base, is this: who do we hope will be more relevant in shaping our national story? An inspirational black leader, a comic-book criminal, or a Russian businessman whose opposition to Putin forced him into exile and, quite possibly, led to his death?

I know who I would prefer to have as part of our national story. I sympathise, then, with the Guardian’s gut reaction against what seems like an absurd and dated statistic: that only five of the 241 new entrants in the most recent update to the ODNB were BAME individuals. Does that not seem impossible, when a Muslim is mayor of London and there are more black and Asian MPs than ever before? Does it not seem to belong to an era that has passed? Arguably, it is meant to; a point which ODNB editor Dr Alex May made when he explained that “In effect, they provide a snapshot of Britain in the decades following the second world war, when women and people from black and ethnic minority backgrounds continued to suffer discrimination of various forms and were not as prominent in public life as is the case now.”

Perhaps the concept of a Dictionary of National Biography is itself out-dated. Perhaps it encourages the sort of snobbery, exclusivity and jingoistic pride that we are no longer willing to tolerate in multi-cultural, 21st century Britain. I am happy to entertain that argument, but I don’t think we can attack the criteria of a national institution without questioning its validity. We can’t enjoy the uniqueness of a national identity without limiting criteria; we don’t get to be inclusive and exclusive at once. That is the problem with the concept of national identity in the first place; a problem that the Guardian fails to acknowledge in either of these articles and one which it (and every other national paper) struggles to apply to many other areas of national life. So often, there seems to be a clash between the ideal and the real: between who we have been, who we are and who we want to be. We paint an idealised picture of ourselves, hold it up, then balk at the face in the mirror next to it. We want to celebrate humans and avoid the complexity and confusion and conflict that ultimately arise from being part of the human race. Mirrors aren’t windows: they show us what’s behind us, not what’s in front. Which should a painting be?

But its very value makes the question of who is included so important. The dictionary is an edited collection, a portrait not a mirror, a dictionary not Wikipedia. It is the product of choice, not random coincidence. It is an educated judgment: a description in life stories of who we are. In a way no single biography could be, its breadth and range makes it a public measure of national values.

The ‘Guardian View’ that wants a national story inclusive of Mandela is admirable. It suggests the desire to see a thread of justice woven into our national tapestry, but for that particular thread to exist would require the sort of backcloth of violent constitutional upheaval that Mandela and his nation lived through. We cannot enjoy one without having suffered the other. So how do we have it all? How can we embrace the ideal and the real? How can we hold onto the good without letting the bad seep through? How can we be inclusive and exclusive at the same time? That would demand a perfect, universal, and fool proof set of criteria; an editor without the cultural prejudges and wavering interests that we all hold; and an ideal historical figure whom we can all follow — one that shows us not just who we are, but who we can be…