A list-based book like this always prompts questions. Are there enough women (21 per cent)

Too many Oxbridge graduates (32 per cent) Too few from ethnic minorities (for example, two black people and one Asian) Why Cliff Richard but not Paul McCartney Why Denis Healey but not Michael Foot or Michael Heseltine

But, in fact, there can be little argument that these portraits do show what the cover says. Each spread consists of a page-sized black-and-white portrait, and on the opposite page a mini-biography together with a small childhood photo of the subject.

The biographies are of the style of a formal and expanded Who's Who entry, not attempting to be anything other than competent.

There are also "soundbites" - probably suggested by the subjects themselves - which range from sections of Shakespeare to sometimes rather toe-curling explanations of "how I got to where I am today". It would have been interesting to know the exact question that prompted these responses.

The portraits themselves - the main point of the book - are nearly always interesting, occasionally decidedly average (Germaine Greer and Cameron Mackintosh, for example), and occasionally inexplicably powerful.

Photographer Carolyn Djanogly delivers the goods where one might expect she should. For example, in an image of Iris Murdoch in 1998, when she had an advanced stage of Alzheimer's disease. She is movingly photographed staring intently and benignly at the sky, with a darkened garden behind her.

Equally impressive is the fact that all except two or three of the 100 have given pictures of themselves in their youth for publication. Architect Denys Lasdun, aged six, looks like he was photographed by Robert Doisneau and a very chubby Linford Christie, aged two, has a fantastic pierrot hairstyle.

The effort involved in rounding up this second batch of pictures would have been great, and Djanogly must have known they would upstage a few of her own shots. It was a brave and successful move, adding a fascinating finishing touch to an impressive photographic project.

Rachel Lamb

Converted for the new archive on 25 January 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.