Christmas Books II
Facts and fancies
Christopher Booker
whItakers Almanack 1979 (Whitaker Cloth 25.75; Shorter Edition 22.80; Library Edition e7.50) For more than two hundred years there have been few more revealing mirrors to the Peculiar national genius of the British than their predilection for every conceivable variety of reference book. Those tiresomely lOgicat Frenchmen in the order-loving eighteenth century may have put in an early bid to become Reference Book Champions of the World, with such offerings as Justus de Perthe's Almanac de Gotha (1763), or iderot's interminable L 'Encyciopedze (1751-76). But even the latter work was only originally inspired as a crib on Ephraim C hambers's Cyclopaedia of 1728 (no relation). With Johnson's Dictionary (1755), the Annual Register (first published by Edmund Burke and a former footman called Dodsley in 1757) and the great Encyclopaedia Britannica, produced between 1768 and 1771, the great British reference book craze was under way. Not the least attractive thing about this national mania has been the obsessive streak of eccentricity and personal idiosyn craey which has run throughout it. The British have been true amateurs of the fact (useless or otherwise), compiling and reading their lists of 'Fighting Ships', Chronologies of World History' and Guiness Books of Records with an almost religious devotion. To have spent seventy°Ile years producing the world's most famous dictionary, or to have put together in the DNB no less than thirty volumes on the host obscure worthies imaginable, may seem quite sane and conventional forms of endeavour. But what other nation would have produced a lighthouse-builder like George Grove, whose life's work was a Dictionary of Music and Musicians? Where else would an industrialist have proclaimed that his Pears Cyclopaedia stood 'equal with s°aP in the fight against disease and ignorance', or would a country clergyman have spent sixty-five years of his life compiling a Kehje Martin's Concise Flora? And what Other nation would have devised a game so .e°, inplex as cricket, with (some might think) me sole justification of providing the mate, rial for perhaps the strangest reference book in the world, Wisden? The two great tests of a reference book are, firstly, use — that it should provide answers to certain questions — but secondly, Much more important, entertainment — that once it is taken up, one should not be able to put it down again at least for half an hour, as one diversionary thread leads on to another. To anyone familiar with Whitaker (I cannot believe that many Spectator readers are not), it goes of course without saying that it passes the first test of any reference book, in that it provides reliable answers to every kind of practical question, such as the exact figures of the North Devon result at the last election, the correct way to address letters to the eldest son of a Marquess, or the name of the President of Equatorial Guinea (Masie Nguema Boyogo Negue Ndong). You may look up the mean rainful and temperatures month-by-month as recorded at Manchester Airport, or find a full guide to the arcane intricacies of 'National Insurance and Related Cash Benefits'. You may even find the postal rates for sending parcels to Surinam or the New Hebrides. But even as you alight on these last scraps of invaluable information your eye begins to stray. Did you know that there are three countries in the world to which you cannot send a letter even if you wish to—the People's Republic of Vietnam, the People's Republic of Mongolia and the People's Republic of Tibet? And here you are caught by the real charm of Whitaker, which is its purely diversionary value as a mine of completely non-essential information.
This quirky quality begins right at the start of the book with the Almanac of the Year which, in addition to useful facts about phases of the moon, is studded with such happy justapositions as '31 October. Hallowmas Eve. Lord Rothschild b. 1910'. The volume is full of idiosyncratic page-fillers which one fears would never be included were the whole enterprise being planned from scratch today, such as the 'Periods of Gestation and Incubation' of various animals, ranging from pigeons (eighteen days) to zebras (fifty-six weeks), coupled with the stern admonition 'In some cases the period may vary and where doubt arises professional advice should be sought'. Did you know that there are now only twenty yards of road for every vehicle in the British Isles? Or that, at the height of five feet above sea-level the horizon is only visible to a distance of 2.9 miles, whereas from the top of Snowdon you can see seventy-six miles? What really emerges from the pages of Whitaker is a last lingering impression of the strange, mad island race the British used to be, before their vast, ramshackle Victorian family mansion began to be pulled down around them to make way for office blocks, motorways and other signs of that madness for modernity and anonymity which now rules the world. One may still find here a record, under 'Trade Unions', of the 'Amalgamated Felt Trimmers and Wool Formers' (683 members), not to mention the 'Amalgamated Society of Journeymen, Felt Hatters and Allied• Workers' (605 members), which both share the same address and General Secretary in Manchester. One may read of the continued survival of 'The Most Exalted Order of the Star of India' (founded 1861), although it has enjoyed 'no conferments since 1947'. Under 'Societies and Institutions', it is good to know that 'Pearson's Fresh Air Fund' still operates from a back street in Victoria, even though the 'Anti-Slavery Society' has had to bow to the winds of modernity and 'relevance' by adding 'For the Protection of Human Rights' to its title. And curiously enough, one of the sections which gives off the strongest whiff of Victorian endeavour and high-minded amateurism is that on 'Science', with its news of the finding by a Bolsover colliery-worker, Mr Malcolm Spencer, of a giant, fossilised Carboniferous dragonfly which the South Kensington Museum has givdn the name of Erasipteron Bolsoveri (the 'graciously-winged of Bolsover' — not of course to be confused with the better-known 'Beast of Bolsover').
But all around the dreadful tide of bureaucracy, metrication and other technological horrors is unmistakably creeping up (even tidal levels themselves are now given in metres). The names of local authorities (Broxtowe, Dacorum, Tendring, Restormel) are of course geographically all-too-often quite unrecognisable. One of the minor delights of Whitaker used to be looking up the salaries of individual civil servants (amazingly high) and church dignitaries (amazingly low), and even though one may still learn that Sir Frank Price receives £6,769 a year for being part-time Chairman of the British Waterways Board, or that the Chief Restorer of the National Gallery has a salary of between £10,508 and £11,765 a year, the dreadful twilight world of the Quangos is fast advancing — so that when, for instance, one turns to discover what daylight robbery of the public purse is being committed by the fourteen members of the Board of the Equal Opportunities Coin• mission (eight ladies, six chaps), one finds against their names no figure for wages at all. And there are Moments when the whole delightful pretence that the world has not changed simply collapses altogether, as in the opening entry under 'Architecture in 1977-8', which describes a new 'Factory at Bath': The design of the new building is a rectangular box with a sophisticated casing . . . The fibreglass cladding system is completely demountable. The grid of fibreglass, glass and louvred panels can easily be altered to suit changing needs, creating break areas, office areas and special work areas as required.
Alas, in such a world, the charm of reference books may soon no longer survive.
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