Christine Nicholls was Co-Editor and then sole Editor of The Dictionary of National Biography for twenty years, until 1995. She raised it from a dry-as-dust publication to a lively work of reference. She has also edited the Hutchinson Encyclopaedia of Biography. She grew up in East Africa and knows many of the people in Elspeth Huxley's circle. She has recently finished writing a History of St Antony's College, Oxford (Macmillan).