Drawn from the archives of the Dictionary of National Biography, this collection of sharply drawn portraits offers a rich cross-section of the men and women who shaped Britain's identity in the twentieth century. The DNB is an unrivalled record of modern British thought and achievement, combining critical insight with lively prose, entertaining anecdotes, and private data. Brief Lives contains many of the best articles from the twentieth-century supplements to the DNB, collected for the first time in a single, affordable volume. Both insightful and witty, and sometimes surprisingly frank, these are definitive, diverse, and often intimate biographical sketches--most were written by people who knew their subjects personally.Here, writers, artists, and musicians rub shoulders with scientists, industrialists, politicians, and soldiers in a unique and highly readable anthology of national endeavour. From Laura Ashley to P.G. Wodehouse, from Tony Hancock to Bertrand Russell, Brief Lives presents no fewer than 150 fresh and enlightening snapshots of British life and culture in modern times.