So a man comes to me...

…and he says he’s got a simple question about getting married to his girlfriend just round the corner at the register office. He popped in there but they’d looked at him funny and sent him to see me. What’s going on? Turns out his girlfriend is from South America, living in an EU country and doesn’t have a visa to visit the UK. After that, it gets complicated. Could I just sort it out for him?

Questions beget questions

The obvious place to start is the Passports & Immigration part of the Home Office website, which directs you to a separate visas site, which starts to ask you questions. Don’t get mad – answer the questions, because then you start to get the facts relating to your particular case.

Firstly, you get a “yes” or “no” on whether you (or your girlfriend or whoever) needs a visa. If the answer’s “yes”, you are offered more information in the form of Frequently Asked Questions. If those three words make the blood run cold, give the website a chance. I thought that most of the questions were probably asked frequently, and they certainly included questions on the lips of my anxious enquirer.

I’m not saying it’s easy. This is a complicated area, and government departments have a fine tradition of making this sort of thing more complicated (see Dickens’ “Circumlocution Office”). The early government websites upheld this tradition, with the Home Office leading the way. They have got much better.

Persist, take a deep breath now and again, and deal with them on their own terms. If you are asked questions, try to answer them. If you take the view that all the information should be available without you showing your hand at all, you will defeat all their efforts to focus on your query and minimise the distractions.

Remember (he says, pedantically): there is no such thing as a general enquiry. At least, not if you want a useful answer. If the website tries to be specific, be grateful and give a little. And if you don’t quite like the answers you get, try a bit of reading around…

(From the Gateway to websites, select “Advice & help”. The Home Office’s Passports & Immigration pages are under “Immigration & nationality”.)


Take a CAB

My chum with the girlfriend problem had also visited the Citizens Advice Bureau, but they couldn’t see him because he had the wrong colour tee-shirt on and there was an “r” in the month. OK, it was some other set of reasons, but he got no joy. But the CAB Adviceguide is open to all, at any time. This website is updated regularly and is divided into four main sections, “your money”, “your family”, “your daily life” and “your rights”.

The advice you get will be impartial, with printable factsheets and pointers to sources of further advice.

Naturally neither the Home Office nor the CAB will tell you whether it’s a good idea to get married. For that you may turn to Mr Punch (“don’t”).

(From the Gateway to websites, select “Advice & help”. CAB Adviceguide is a Key Link.)

Clubs, cabals and captains of England

You know what it’s like: new people move in, and the first thing they do is change the colour of the front door. It happens to information databases too…

Magic ingredients

When the Oxford University Press took over the Dictionary of National Biography, renaming it the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB), they promised benefits galore: rewritten entries, many new entries and “added value” features. It was quickly apparent that they had delivered on the first two. Thousands of entries have been revised or completely rewritten, and the ones I’ve dipped into are mostly a pleasure to read, the dry-as-dust elements replaced by attractive prose. Hagiography is off the agenda: subjects come over as real people with good and bad aspects. Complete b*st*rds are dealt with as they deserve. But what of the bells and whistles?

The stand-out feature is the collection of “themes”. Each consists of an essay on a given theme, with links to the individual entries in the main Dictionary. There is a vast range of themes, starting (alphabetically) with the Aberdeen Philosophical Society (joke removed on grounds of racial harmony), and ending with Yorkists (not chocolate bar lovers – Yorkists supported the House of York against the House of Lancaster).

Apart from being often interesting in their own right, these themes are really useful if one or more of them chimes in with some research you are doing. Antarctic explorers, bluestockings, captains of England (cricket, naturally) – the range is wide and wonderful.

When I saw “Patrons of the Mermaid Tavern”, I had a look to see if they’d covered the distinguished denizens of my own local, but sadly not. Still writing the essay, I expect.


Roll up and try your luck

Another great piece of “added value” which Oxford have brought to the DNB is a terrifically versatile search function. The “people” search allows you to specify a name, obviously, but you can also find people alive or active between certain dates, or people born, educated, or buried at particular times or places. There are several more search criteria. Try it –it’s strangely addictive, like a sort of biographical fruit-machine.

(From the Gateway to websites, select “Biography”. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is a Key Link. This is an Exclusive Resource for Westminster Libraries members. Outside a Westminster library, you will need your card number to log in.)