The new update of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online, published on 8 January 2015,  adds biographies of 226 men and women who shaped modern Britain and who died in 2011.

Among those now included in the ODNB online are the journalist and author Christopher Hitchens, actress Elizabeth Taylor, artist Lucian Freud, SOE officer and travel writer, Patrick Leigh Fermor, and the film director Ken Russell. Also added are biographies on Claude Choules—the last surviving British-born veteran of the First World War—who was born in 1901, and the songwriter and singer, Amy Winehouse, who was born in 1983.

Historians now added to the Oxford DNB include Patrick Collinson, Kevin Sharpe, John Ehrman, Dorothy Thompson, and Norman Hampson.

Selected highlights, a full list of new biographies, and an Introduction to the new update are available via the ODNB website.

The Oxford DNB now provides biographies of 59,453 individuals from prehistory to the year 2011, available via OLIS. Online updates are published in January, May and September of each year. The January 2015 update is the first under the general editorship of Professor Sir David Cannadine, who is a Visiting Professor in the Oxford History Faculty.

Dr Philip Carter, Publication Editor, OUP