A place for the famous, and less so

George Washington and Princess Diana are near the back, while such lesser-knowns as murdered Liverpool toddler Jamie Bulger and the “Busby Babes,” a soccer team struck by tragedy, occupy the front.

No, it’s not another wax museum, but the latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the printed pantheon of Britons great and small, and of those who influenced them. The work was published Thursday by the Oxford University Press.

The inclusion of photographer Linda McCartney, the late wife of ex-Beatle Paul and a campaigner for animal rights, raised some eyebrows. But the publisher said it was a sign that the 60-volume work was simply becoming more egalitarian.

Linda McCartney “was also a very important cultural figure in her own right,” editor Brian Harrison said. “I’m not saying that she should get as much attention as Queen Victoria, but the great pride of the dictionary is that it should have small people as well as large people in it.”