Content
The Almanack consists of articles, lists and tables on a wide range of subjects including education, the peerage, government departments, health and social issues, and the environment.
The largest section is the countries directory, which includes recent history, politics, economic information and culture overviews. Each edition also features a selection of critical essays focusing on events of the previous year. Extensive astronomical data covering the forthcoming year is published at the rear of the book.
Whitaker's Almanack is not an encyclopedia but more of a yearbook of contemporary matters and a directory of various establishments in the UK (such as clubs, public bodies and universities).
Whitaker's was prized enough that Winston Churchill took a personal interest in the continued publication of the book after its headquarters were destroyed in The Blitz; a copy is also sealed in Cleopatra's Needle on the north bank of the River Thames.
Read more about this topic: Whitaker's Almanack
Famous quotes containing the word content:
“Let us have a fair field! This is all we ask, and we will be content with nothing less. The finger of evolution, which touches everything, is laid tenderly upon women. They have on their side all the elements of progress, and its spirit stirs within them. They are fighting, not for themselves alone, but for the future of humanity. Let them have a fair field!”
—Tennessee Claflin (1846–1923)
“In America the taint of sectarianism lies broad upon the land. Not content with acknowledging the supremacy as the Diety, and with erecting temples in his honor, where all can bow down with reverence, the pride and vanity of human reason enter into and pollute our worship, and the houses that should be of God and for God, alone, where he is to be honored with submissive faith, are too often merely schools of metaphysical and useless distinctions. The nation is sectarian, rather than Christian.”
—James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851)
“Not always can flowers, pearls, poetry, protestations, nor even home in another heart, content the awful soul that dwells in clay.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)