
Over the last two hundred years Parliament has witnessed & effected dramatic & often turbulent change. Political parties rose
- & fell. The old aristocratic order passed away. The vote was won for the working classes &, eventually, for women. The world was torn apart by two extraordinarily bloody wars. & individual politicians were cheered for their altruism or their bravery & jeered for their sexual or financial misdemeanours. This second volume of Chris Bryant`s majestic Parliament: The Biography has a cast of characters that
Includes:: some of British history`s most famous names: the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, Gladstone, Disraeli, Lloyd George, Churchill & Thatcher. Its recurring theme is reform & innovation, but it also lays bare obsessive respect for the past & a dedication to evolution rather than revolution, which has left us with a fudged constitution still perilously dependent on custom, convention & gentlemen`s agreements. This is riveting, flawlessly researched & accessible popular history for anyone with an interest in why modern Britain is the nation it is today.