The House of Lords has members who are appointed because of their eminence in their chosen fields. Some are well-known public figures, such as Robert Winston, Michael Grade, Melvyn Bragg, Joan Bakewell, Alan Sugar and Andrew Lloyd-Webber. However, some have family members who are even better known than they are. This week’s quiz is therefore devoted to identifying…
Tomorrow’s recall of the House of Lords will be the first for nearly a decade. We were last recalled in 2002, though in that year it occurred on two occasions: on 3 April for tributes to Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and on 24 September to discuss Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. The preceding…
The House of Lords has a long history, having íts origins in the kings’s court that preceded the summoning of knights of the shires to court. For this quiz, I thought I would pose some historical questions. Feel free to have a guess if not too sure. As usual, the first two readers to supply the…
Mark D’Arcy of BBC Parliament blogs that he thinks that it has been a good year for Parliament. One can see his argument. The chairs and members of select committees in the Commons are now elected, the committees have continued to be productive, and two have recently gained a high public profile because of the ‘phone-hacking…
Wednesday of last week was the final sitting day before the summer recess. The conclusion of the sitting was unusual because members broke into applause. It was the last sitting presided over by the current Lord Speaker, Baroness Hayman. As she left the chamber, peers broke into spontaneous applause, in appreciation of all her work as our…
