All articles written by Lord Lexden on PoliticsHome.com

19 Feb Political parties

'He said there was no chance of her winning': Inside the 1975 Conservative leadership race

Margaret Thatcher owed her victory to the cunning Airey Neave and the miscalculations of Tories who just wanted to give Ted Heath ‘a kick up the bum’, reports Lord Lexden

27 Jan Books & culture

'Impeccable scholarship': Lord Lexden reviews 'British Christians and the Third Reich'

Andrew Chandler has produced a long overdue and powerful exploration of how British Churches and their congregations responded to Hitler’s Nazi regime

18 Jan Political parties

The true origins of one-nation conservatism

Disraeli is wrongly credited with the strand of conservatism that seeks to unify the two nations of rich and poor. As Lord Lexden reports, Stanley Baldwin was the original one-nation Tory

16 Jan History

Legal jeopardy: the fall of the first Labour government

A Labour figure with more legal judgment than political nous stumbles into an opposition trap. Lord Lexden explains the demise of the party’s first experience of government

14 Nov 2024 Books & culture

'A clever and captivating book': Lord Lexden reviews 'The Scapegoat'

Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s learned study of the 1st Duke of Buckingham is written with a novelist’s verve and skill

27 Sep 2024 History

Red scare: the story of the Zinoviev letter

Conservative peer and historian Lord Lexden recalls the Daily Mail’s damaging 1924 campaign against the Labour Party, culminating in the forged Zinoviev letter

02 Sep 2024 Books & culture

A 'significant contribution to history': Lord Lexden reviews 'Precipice' by Robert Harris

An impressive blend of fact and fiction, Robert Harris' account of the love affair between Herbert Asquith and Venetia Stanley reveals her to be one of the most consequential women in British history

29 Jul 2024 Books & culture

'Enchanting': Lord Lexden reviews 'Monsieur: Patrick O’Higgins – The Lost Photographer'

This superb collection of the surviving black-and-white photography of Patrick O’Higgins is powerfully evocative

26 Jul 2024 Books & culture

Lord Lexden reviews: 'Bloody Panico! or, Whatever Happened to The Tory Party'

Angry and fast-moving, Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s powerful attempt to understand what has gone wrong in the Tory Party is rooted in despair

24 May 2024 Books & culture

Lord Lexden reviews '44 Days in Prague'

Ann Shukman has produced a vivid and scrupulously fair investigation into her grandfather Walter Runciman’s role in the doomed pre-war mission to broker a peace deal between the Czechoslovak Republic and its Sudeten German minority

30 Apr 2024 Books & culture

'A brilliant little book': Lord Lexden reviews the newly revised, 'Gimson’s Kings & Queens'

Written with a most attractive astringency, Andrew Gimson’s book has been updated to include the passing of Queen Elizabeth II and the succession of her son, Charles III

09 Apr 2024 Political parties

A tale of two Tories: the by-election that made Churchill weep

By trying to parachute an ex-Liberal cabinet minister called Winston Churchill into a safe seat, the Conservatives split a local party and set off one of the most rancorous by-elections in history. A hundred years later, Lord Lexden tells a tale of fighting, dirty tricks and flying turnips

28 Mar 2024 Books & culture

'I doubt if a better history book will be published this year': Lord Lexden reviews 'Queen Victoria and Her Prime Ministers'

Anne Somerset has produced a masterful and scintillating study of Queen Victoria’s relationship with her 10 prime minsters

26 Feb 2024 Books & culture

'Excellent': Lord Lexden reviews 'Sex, Spies and Scandal: The John Vassall Affair'

Drawing on recently declassified secret service files, Alex Grant has written a definitive account of a sensational scandal and its terrible repercussions

22 Jan 2024 Political parties

A tale of two parties: the origin of the Tory Party

Lord Lexden details the origin of the Tory Party – born of a crisis triggered by a lying priest and a monarch’s ruthless suppression of the Whigs

20 Dec 2023 Books & culture

A valuable book: Lord Lexden reviews 'Once a King: The Lost Memoir of Edward VIII'

Making her literary debut in fine style, Jane Marguerite Tippett has turned Edward VIII’s previously unseen jottings into a first-rate biographical study

21 Nov 2023 History

We need a new independent review of the allegations against Ted Heath

There is an overwhelming – some say unanswerable – case for an independent review of a number of allegations of child sex abuse made against Ted Heath after his death. The allegations were left unresolved at the end of a deeply flawed police investigation, known as Operation Conifer, in 2017.

06 Nov 2023 Books & culture

Incisive: Lord Lexden reviews 'Sing As We Go'

Simon Heffer has produced a self-confident and omniscient history of Britain between the wars

04 Oct 2023 Books & culture

‘Meticulous’: Lord Lexden reviews 'The 1922 Committee: Power Behind the Scenes'

With unrestricted access to its records, Lord Norton’s masterful account sheds fresh light on the workings of this mysterious committee

13 Sep 2023 Books & culture

Lord Lexden reviews 'Ancestral Voices in Irish Politics'

Lord Bew has written an absorbing study of the often fraught relationship between the remarkable Charles Stewart Parnell and his intellectually impressive lieutenant, John Dillon

20 Jul 2023 Books & culture

Fascinating: Lord Lexden reviews 'A Liberal Chronicle in Peace and War'

The magnificent efforts of two industrious editors have rescued these invaluable diaries from oblivion

19 Jun 2023 Defence

Lords Diary: Lord Lexden

From record-breaking late night sittings – with remarkable endurance skills – to becoming a 'national treasure'

07 Jun 2023 Books & culture

Written with characteristic verve and skill: Lord Lexden reviews Antonia Fraser's 'Lady Caroline Lamb'

In this delightful new book, Antonia Fraser captures the appeal of a woman whose indifference to societal conventions helped pave the way to equality

09 May 2023 History

The king’s dilemma: how it fell to George V to choose a new prime minister

A century ago, it fell to King George V to select a new prime minister. Lord Lexden revisits the machinations that lay behind the eventual decision

28 Dec 2022 Foreign affairs

How an Irish state was created 100 years ago

“You have agreed to a revolution in Ireland.” So said Edward Carson, the famous leader of the Irish Unionists, as the legislation giving full internal self-government to 26 of the 32 counties of Ireland was passed by the House of Lords, of which he was then a Member, in December 1922.

05 Dec 2022 Political parties

Secrets of the ballot box: 150 years of voting in private

Seldom can a major constitutional reform have aroused so little enthusiasm. No public meetings were held to demand it; no great demonstrations were organised in its support. After much parliamentary dithering and delay, the Ballot Act finally became law in the second half of 1872, exactly 150 years ago.

02 Nov 2022 Books & culture

'Entertaining': Lord Lexden reviews 'Cheers, Mr Churchill! Winston in Scotland'

In a carefully researched and lively account, Andrew Liddle finally sets the record straight on Winston Churchill’s attitude to Scotland

04 Oct 2022 Books & culture

'Magnificently indiscreet': Lord Lexden reviews the last of Henry ‘Chips’ Channon’s diaries

No praise is too high for Simon Heffer’s editing of these irresistible records of upper-class life in a vanished Britain

13 Jun 2022 Books & culture

An 'impressive' account: Lord Lexden reviews 'Great Hatred: The Assassination of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson MP'

Assassinated on his London doorstep 100 years ago this month, this impressive book uncovers the fateful events that led to the murder of the military statesman and Ulster Unionist MP, Sir Henry Wilson

24 May 2022 Parliament

Elections to the House of Lords – 100 years of debate

Which was the first government to try to reform the composition of the House of Lords by bringing in elected members?

14 Jan 2021 Foreign affairs

"Statesman of Europe": restoring the reputation of Britain's longest serving foreign secretary

Thomas Otte’s superb biography turns the tables on Sir Edward Grey’s critics

08 Nov 2018 Home affairs

How the Armistice changed our democracy forever

The end of the Great War ushered in a new era of mass democracy, as millions of newly enfranchised working men and women voted for the first time. As we mark 100 years since the Armistice, historian Lord Lexden reflects on how it helped shape our politics

30 Apr 2018

60 years of Life Peers

Queen Victoria was an early and strong supporter. Harold Macmillan referred to them as ‘the day boys’. Hugh Gaitskell feared they would be used to block a reforming Labour government and preserve the privilege of the House of Lords. Sixty years on from the Act which finally created Life Peers, historian Lord Lexden looks back at how Parliament’s Upper Chamber was transformed