Did you know that the twelfth of August was an important date in the Victorian and Edwardian political – and social – calendar? In today’s blog our director Dr Paul Seaward continues our look into the summer holidays of parliamentarians and the hobby with particular influence over Westminster’s summer timetable… No date was more firmly fixed in the diaries of Victorian and Edwardian politicians than … Continue reading The ‘Glorious Twelfth’
At the end of June, History of Parliament Director Dr Paul Seaward joined House of Commons photographer Jess Taylor to take part in a British Academy summer showcase event about picturing the House of Commons, comparing her work to the innovative and evocative illustrations published in a generation of illustrated magazines published from the 1880s to around 1920. You can see a recording of the … Continue reading The Graphic Parliament: Picturing the House of Commons 1880-1920
In today’s blog we hear from the History of Parliament’s director Dr Paul Seaward, continuing our recent theme of Parliament and theatre. However, as Dr Seaward explains, sometimes Parliament is a theatre all of its own.. Although the English parliament had existed for centuries already, the first descriptions we have of either chamber come after the sittings of the house of commons were relocated to … Continue reading ‘What a theatre is the House of Commons!’
This week the History of Parliament celebrates the 70th anniversary of one of many important dates in its history. To mark the occasion our director Dr Paul Seaward looks back to the beginnings of our project as we know it today. The History of Parliament has lots of birthdays, for its genesis as a project was a complicated and long-drawn out process. But one of … Continue reading 1951 and the Birth of the History of Parliament
St George’s Day seems an appropriate moment to invoke John Bright’s famous, and much misunderstood, statement of 1865 that ‘England is the Country of Parliament… England is the Mother of Parliaments’. But to some in the seventeenth century and before, as British Academy and Wolfson Research Professor at the History of Parliament, Paul Seaward, explores, it was the ancient Britons who had invented parliaments, in … Continue reading Ancient Britain, the Mother of Parliaments?
This evening Dr Henry Miller of Durham University will give this term’s final paper to the IHR seminar Parliaments, Politics and People. Ahead of the session Paul Seaward, British Academy/Wolfson Foundation Research Professor at the History of Parliament Trust, revisits his paper on writing the history of parliament… Parliament has been in the middle of narratives of the institutional development of the British state since … Continue reading Parliaments, Politics and People seminar: On Writing the History of Parliament
This blog from Paul Seaward, British Academy/Wolfson Research Professor at the History of Parliament Trust, is part of our Named Parliaments series. He explores the so-called exclusion crisis of the late seventeenth century. You might also be interested in Paul’s recent blog on the Cavalier Parliament. Three short Parliaments – those that assembled in March 1679, in October 1680, and March 1681 – are collectively … Continue reading The Exclusion Parliaments
Earlier this summer the History of Parliament Trust enjoyed their public annual lecture in Portcullis House, Westminster. This year’s speaker was Paul Seaward, British Academy and Wolfson Foundation Research Professor at the History of Parliament Trust. Below he offers a taste of his lecture about the power of time in the Parliament… Time is inescapable anywhere, but a sense of time passing is oppressively insistent … Continue reading History of Parliament Trust’s Annual Lecture: A Brief History of Parliamentary Time
Our ‘Named Parliaments’ series continues. Today Paul Seaward, British Academy/Wolfson Research Professor at the History of Parliament Trust explores the Cavalier Parliament, the first Parliament after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660… The Parliament elected in April 1661 was designed to sweep away the last vestiges of the English Revolution and restore the monarchy to its pre-Civil War glory. It was the Convention of … Continue reading The Cavalier Parliament
This week as part of our Mothers and Fathers of the House series, Paul Seaward, British Academy/Wolfson research professor at the History of Parliament Trust, explores the origins of the parliamentary tradition of the Father of the House… The origins of the idea of a ‘father of the House’ are, like so many parliamentary traditions, deeply obscure, which is scarcely surprising for a role which … Continue reading The Origins of a Father of the House
