Quality Control

In my line of work in Births, Deaths and Marriages at The Telegraph, when hundreds of pounds are exchanged and notices become a source of public record, accuracy is key, both to satisfy the customer and uphold the reputation of the publication.  The Times are more lacksadaisical in their checking - one egregious example recently was that they put a notice about the D-Day landings under a 'Legal Notices' headline.
For me, zeal in being correct is important.  Two examples from August illustrate my point.
Firstly, we received an email with this text:
"McGREGOR, Linde (nee Berger) (Edinburgh). On Monday 11th August aged 93. Born Lubsdorf, West Prussia, married Neill (deceased 1976), mother of John and Alexandra, grandmother to Ruari, Andrew, Joanna and Iain. Private funeral, followed by commemoration on 15th November. Venue tba."
Now, of course, we would always put the accent on the first 'e' of née but what drew my attention was the mention of West Prussia, as when Linde was born, West Prussia no longer existed - it was part of Poland and called the Polish Corridor.  As is my way with names from mainland Europe, I check for special characters and I find Lubsdorf is actually Lübstorf and it is in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (i.e. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, hence the geographical-historical mistake over West Prussia).  After pointing this out to the funeral director, he came back after consulting with the family, who had talked to Mrs McGregor's nonogenerian sister, saying that family had settled on 'Mecklenburg'.
The second was:
"HOLLMAN, Dr Arthur died on 13.08.14 from cancer in his 91st year. Sustained since his wife Catharine’s death eight years ago by the love and affection of their daughters and eight grandchildren. He was a cardiologist, medicinal plantsman and cardiac historian. In 1971 he saved the mmHg for blood pressure measurement when Brussels was replacing it with the kilopascal. No flowers please. Donations if desired for St Michael’s Hospice via the Funeral Director Arthur C Towner Ltd, 2-4 Norman Road, St Leonards-On-Sea, TN37 6NH. Funeral at Pett Parish Church TN35 4HE on 29.08.14 at 14:00h and afterwards at Pett Village Hall. Memorial event in London to follow later in the year."
The digital dates instantly get changed into analogue but what piqued me was the claim, tossed in with ill-concealed contempt, about 'Brussels'.  In fact, it had nothing do with the EEC as then constituted, not least because Britain wasn't part of that club until 1973.  I was determined to present the correct information and after about 20 minutes of research into blood pressure and various journals on the matter, I could state with precision that, in 1971, it was the organisation the General Conference on Weights and Measures replacing mmHg with the kilopascal.  The meeting took place in Sèvres, a suburb of Paris (where the Allied victors in World War One signed a peace treaty with the Ottoman Empire).  So absolutely nothing to do with Brussels whatsoever.  The funeral director accepted the change to " In 1971 he saved the mmHg for blood pressure measurement when the General Conference on Weights and Measures was replacing it with the kilopascal."  Clearly, as in the case of Mrs McGregor, the family had misremembered the details of the subject, in this case associating anything (especially regarding perceived imposition) to do with the European mainland as 'Brussels'.
Once I did leave an historical error in place as it would have meaningless to change it to being correct.  One Derek Burrington Wheatly, it was asserted, was born on 21st December 1933 in Islamabad.  Now, Pakistan did not exist in 1933, let alone the purpose-built capital of Islamabad, yet to list an obscure village in British India would not have aided general comprehension, as I discussed with the funeral director.

These are all on public record and are open source, so I am not violating any data protection rules.  My passion for political geography and history allowed me to pick up what others might miss.  Though I excoriate The Times for the laxity of its Announcements page, its sponsorship of history atlases has greatly expanded my knowledge from my teenage years onwards - in 1995 I bought The Times Compact History of the World.  Last year, I brought myself up to date with The Times Concise History of the World, a larger tome published in 2013, with bigger maps, revised text and pictures (Compact had none of the latter). It is a most superlative work.  I profess though, I did notice some errors and ambiguities and I will email both the series editor Geoffrey Parker and the publishers, in the hope that they may be corrected for any future instalments of the series.  It is not to nitpick but to raise the standard yet higher.  Below are my findings:

•  P. 15, Map 1: ‘Mammoth steppe’ is displayed extending into Korea on the left-hand segment of the map, while the right-hand segment (showing East Asia and Australia) does not show it in Manchuria or Korea.
• P. 23: In the fifth paragraph, first sentence, it would read better as “…though the 10^th century saw the beginnings of…” rather than “… and the 10^th century saw the beginnings of…” in the context of Assyria’s recovery from the ‘Dark Ages’.
• P. 28: I would question the assertion that Buddhism is Asia’s ‘most pervasive religion’ (second paragraph, last sentence) given the predominance of Islam from the Aegean to the Indus, Aden to Astana and Baku to Kashgar, with Indonesia, Malaya, Mindanao, the Maldives and significant pockets in India and Burma
• P. 35: The Jewish Revolt against Roman rule is stated as 64 BC when in fact it is 130 years later in AD 66.
• P. 36, Map 1: Alpes Poenninae is misspelt as Alpes Penninae.
• P. 37, Map 1: (i) Cilicia, Syria and Judaea are colour co-ordinated as public provinces when in fact they are imperial provinces. (ii) It is ambiguous having Judaea as a client kingdom from 41 -4 as the latter date could be either BC or AD to the uninitiated.
• P. 44: it is an exaggeration to state that ‘persecution by Timur and other rulers extinguished’ Christianity in Asia.
• P.67, Map 1: Little or no plague mortality is displayed only for Aquitaine and English Gascony, when it should also be displayed for Bruges, the area around Milan, Poland, northern Bohemia and north-eastern Germany. 
•  P. 70, Map 2: Oran is stated as an Ottoman possession in 1520 when this was not the case until 1708.
• P. 72: the Incan city of Huánuco is misspelt as Huánaco.
• P. 83, Map 3: The Papal enclave of Avignon and the Principality of Orange are not displayed (the latter ceded to France in 1713 should also be colour co-ordinated as such).
• P. 84, Map 2: Though titled ‘Russian expansion in Siberia’, for consistency the map should show additions made in the Vyborg area and Estonia at the very edge.
• P. 93, Map 1: (i) it is incorrect to state that Algiers was a Habsburg possession from 1510 to 1529 when Ottoman-sponsored pirates held it between 1516 and 1520.  (ii) Prussia has been subsumed into Poland
• P. 93: the first sentence of the final paragraph should omit the word ‘was’ or reword as ‘was forced to abandon’, to wit “… at the peace of Westphalia (1648), the emperor was abandoned virtually all his powers in Germany…"
• P. 96, timeline: Ceylon and Burma were independent in 1948, not 1947.
• P. 100, Map 2: The borderlines dividing up Great Britain are erroneous in an international context, for as the text makes clear, after 1707 the island formed a single economic unit
• P. 105, Map 3: (i) the red line 36° 30’ is unexplained by the legend.  (ii) Are the slave population percentages part of the total population, the total workforce or some other measurable statistic?  It is unclear.
• P. 113, Map 1, legend: the orange demarcation should read’ Northern boundary of Mexico’.
• P. 116, timeline: (i) Greece is listed as gaining independence in 1822 when actually they declared independence in 1821 and did not fully gain independence until 1832 (Treaty of Constantinople).  (ii) Belgium is listed as gaining independence in 1831, but it was actually 1830 (at the London Conference of that year).
• P. 118, timeline: The ‘South African (‘Boer’) War’ should be ‘2^nd South African (‘Boer’) War’.
• P. 119, Map 2:    (i) Spanish Rio Muni in Africa is colour co-ordinated as Portuguese; (ii) Zanzibar is omitted (it became a British protectorate in 1890); (iii) there is no display of French enclaves in India; (iv) some raw materials (an empty diamond, a horizontal black box) are not listed on the legend; (v) the legend is unclear when it mentions ‘sphere of effective’; is this influence (as opposed to ‘proposed’) or control?  (vi) If princely states are represented in the colour palette of the legend, why are there dotted lines across a partial part of India?
• P. 126, timeline: the Panama Canal opened in 1914, not 1904.
• P. 127, Map 1:    (i) Serbia is too large for 1900; (ii) Germany’s pictorial depiction encompasses Lithuania and much of Russian-controlled Poland; (iii) Serbia and Montenegro are colour co-ordinated as being part of the Ottoman Empire when they were not in 1900; (iv) Italy’s depiction encompasses Trieste and the Alto Adige; (v) Norway is pictured as independent of Sweden (though this did not occur until 1905). (vi) South Sakhalin is divided when this was not the case in 1900.  (vii) Spanish Morocco did not exist in 1900.  (viii) Mauritius and Socotra not coloured ‘British’. (ix) Puerto Rico not coloured as ‘USA’. (x)  Trinidad and Tobago is not present on the map.
• P. 129: it is incorrect to refer to the ‘Soviet empire’, as empires draw resources from the periphery and direct them to the centre, whereas the USSR directed resources from the centre to its periphery and from periphery to periphery as part of its ideology.  ‘Soviet state’ or ‘Soviet realm’ would be more appropriate.
• P. 130, Map 1: By 1928, Mongolia is not referred to as ‘Outer Mongolia’  - a Chinese imperialist term denoting distance from Beijing – rather Mongolian People’s Republic.
• P. 133, Map 1: (i) While legitimate to display divisional lines in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (which had separate parliamentary jurisdiction), it is erroneous to divide up Great Britain with such lines (as Welsh, Scottish, English (and Irish) MPs were represented in one parliament).  (ii) Miscolouring of coast southwest of Montenegro.
• P. 133, Map 1, Map 2: Luxembourg was invaded and occupied by Germany but the maps imply otherwise, as it is colour co-ordinated in the same manner as the Netherlands, which was not invaded (but remains ‘behind’ the front line).
• P. 136, Map 1:    (i) South Tyrol’s border is not at its fullest extent; (ii) the northern line of the border of Alsace-Lorraine is in the wrong place; (iii) Saarland is in the wrong place; (iv) East Prussia extends too far to the south-west (touching the Vistula); (v) the pre-war and post-war borders of Schleswig-Holstein are both incorrect;; (vi) the demilitarised Rhineland is not at its fullest extent; (vii) the Vatican City regained independence in 1929 and this could be rendered in the legend as ’19 Vatican City independent’ with a directional line pointing to the centre of dot representing Rome.
• P. 138, Map 1: (i) Tannu Tuva not delineated.  (ii) Aden protectorate not marked out or coloured.  (iii) Spanish Rio Muni and Portuguese Cabinda coloured as part of gold bloc.
•   P. 140, Map 1: (i) Ploesti is in the wrong place on the map (Map 2 on p. 141, shows its correct location, south of the Carpathians); (ii) Glasgow, Newcastle and Belfast are not displayed as ‘major cities severely damaged by bombing’.
• P. 141: (i) Map 2: Petsamo is displayed as outside the Finnish border;  (ii) the use of ‘egregious folly’ (paragraph 2, final sentence) is tautology; a more appropriate adjective would be ‘extreme’.
•   P. 145, Map 2: absence of a comma in ‘1,000 National Guards’ called in to suppress rioting in Rochester in 1964.
• P. 146, Map 1: the Lithuanian SSR does not have the correct eastern border.
• P. 146, Map 3: Belgium’s ‘Net Marshall Aid as percentage of national income 1948-9 must be incorrect as it means the Belgian economy at the time was three times the size of that of contemporaneous France.
• P. 148-9, Map 1: though Albania is tiny and already incorporating ‘control or influence secured by 1954’ and the Warsaw Pact, there should be a way to display to show ‘turned antagonistic to USSR from the early 1960s’ (maybe around the ‘Warsaw Pact’ red line).
• P. 149, Map 2: the Azerbaijan SSR and Turkmen SSR are not located within the border of the ‘Soviet Union 1945 (despite ‘prison camp’ skulls being present).
• P. 153: there is no indication of South Korean democracy, a misleading omission.
• P. 154, Map 1: No mention of Senegambia’s abortive federation.
• P. 155, Map 1: (i) Surinam’s independence from the Dutch is ignored; (ii) Macau was still a colonial possession in 1998 yet it is displayed as no longer Portuguese.  Better to say, ‘Colonial possessions in 2000’.
• P. 157, Map 2: It is completely misleading to label ‘Ansar al-Islam and terrorist camps’ in Iraq as if this provided legitimate justification for the 2003 invasion.  The Senate Report on Pre-War Intelligence on Iraq, issued in 2004, concluded that the Saddam Hussein regime viewed Ansar al-Islam as a threat to its survival.  For its part, Ansar al-Islam called Saddam Hussein its sworn enemy.  Further, while Ansar al-Islam existed in Mosul and Halabja – beyond the reach of Baghdad – it was never in Karbala before 2003.
• P. 158: Lower-case ‘f’ for ‘fascist (first paragraph, last sentence).
• P. 160: Lower-case ‘f’ for ‘fundamentalism’ (fourth paragraph, last sentence).
• P. 161, Map 1: (i) South Sudan’s independent status is not displayed; (ii) Colonel Gaddafi’s name is misspelt; (iii) Zaïre, not Zaire.
• P. 163, Map 1: 2002 Thai ‘War on Drugs’ needs a comma in ‘over 1,000 shot dead’.  
• P. 166-7: (i) The title of the spread is incorrect – Europe since 1973, not 1945; (ii) Map 1: Albania’s application to join the EU is not displayed; (iii) Map 1: Yugoslavia did not exist in 2007 – Montenegro and Serbia split from their union in 2006; (iv) the colour co-ordination for new members of the EU jars – it would be better to have gradations of blue. (v) Map 2: Northern Ireland’s vote for devolution is not displayed; (vi) Paragraph two, sentence five: ten countries joined in 2004 (Cyprus, Malta, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia), not eight.
• P. 172, Map 2: (i) France is not given a ranking in 2000 for a 50m+ population; (ii) for some reason there is no information for Belize (maybe its government does not hold these records).
• P. 173, Map 1: (i) Washington D.C. is not displayed as a ‘site of religious terrorism’ (2001); (ii) the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is an ethnic war; scholars on the subject are agreed that religious division plays no part and so it is erroneous to portray it as such; (iii) Assam is not coloured as part of India; (iv) Bhutan and Timor-Leste do not appear on the map; (v) half of Georgia’s borders have disappeared.
• P. 174, Map 1: the size of the Indian economy is inaccurate (in 2005, it was $834bn, not $3,729bn; adjusted for PPP, which this part of the legend does not state, India was $3,611bn).
• P. 175: accompanying text to the image “A Euro coin” is incorrect to state ten new states joined in 2004-07 because twelve new states joined in that period (Cyprus, Malta, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovenia).
• P. 180: Bizerta is on p. 93, not p. 937.