From "Abbeys," monastic organizations that were important in local-level medieval government, to "Zutphen, Battle of," where the great poet Sir Philip Sidney lost his life in 1586, this 1,000-plus-page tome offers an erudite register of all things British. Editor John Cannon's emphases are sometimes idiosyncratic--the entry for the Beatles, inarguably influential in British and world history, is as short as that for "beagling," a particular kind of rabbit hunting. The Oxford Companion to British History is an invaluable and well-written resource for Anglophiles nonetheless.