They never married

Ian Hamilton

  • The Dictionary of National Biography: 1981-1985 edited by Lord Blake and C.S. Nicholls
    Oxford, 518 pp, £40.00, March 1990, ISBN 0 19 865210 0

On the dust-jacket of the latest supplement to the Dictionary of National Biography there are photographs of David Niven, Diana Dors, Eric Morecambe, John Betjeman and William Walton. Dors has a leering ‘Come up and read me sometime’ expression on her face and Niven wears his yacht-club greeter’s smile. Morecambe seems to be laughing at one of his own jokes. Amiable images, devised no doubt to lure us into a placidly elegiac mood: death can’t be all that bad if it gets you an entry in the DNB. But what’s the matter with Betjeman and Walton? They look glum and sulky, as if they’ve been put in the wrong graveyard by mistake.

You are not Logged In

  • If you have already registered login here
  • If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
  • If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
  • If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
  • If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions