With 63 million words spread over 55,000 biographies, the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is paradise for anybody curious about those who have shaped the history of the British Isles. From December 2-4 Times readers can browse the online edition here for free.
What’s more, we have teamed up with the ODNB to give you the chance to win a year’s personal subscription to the online edition (worth £195, plus VAT) or Oxford University Press books of your choice, to the total value of £100. There will be three runners-up prizes of three-month subscriptions or OUP books worth £50.
Click here to take advantage of your free access and find the answers to the questions below. Entries must be received by midnight on December 5.
1. Which journalist began her working life as a reindeer in a shop’s Christmas display?
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2. What have the scientist Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the writer Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1851) and the broadcaster Kenny Everett (1944-95) in common?
3. Which modern politician regularly enjoyed fish fingers for his Christmas dinner?
4. Who was “Christmas May”, and why was he given the nickname?
5. Whose Christmas pudding was made “by grating three biscuits with a saw, adding sugar and seven raisins flavoured with methylated spirits, mixing them with snow, and boiling them in an old sock over the primus”?