Ah, the dear old quiz companion. I should think that if you're reading this review now, you're thinking about buying this second hand, since its been out of print for several years now.
I suppose you could say that I'm writing this review out of sentiment really. When I started writing pub quizzes, many, many years ago, the first version of this great little book was the one I could always turn to in my hour of need. Lets be clear about this. Its primarily a book for the quiz setter. What you get are handy little facts, ready to be slotted into questions for your quiz.
Its not perfect, and what's more it never was. Errors made in the first edition were never corrected in later ones- eg. - the lovers in Aida were BURIED alive, not BURNED alive - you see the difference one stray letter can make. If we're being pedantic it was Edward Hodges Bailey who sculpted Nelson, and not Edward Hodges Banley ! Its been superceded by far more comprehensive works such as Trevor Montague's A to Z of Nearly Everything. However it not just nostalgia or sentiment which means that I still return to this sometimes when setting a quiz.I like the arbitrariness, the quirkyness of what is included, and what is not. If you are a regular setter and you haven't got this in your library, then you can do worse than getting a second hand copy of the last edition. For all of its faults, this is an awful lot more useful than many of the quiz books out there.