In a letter to The Daily Telegraph published on 23 April, Alistair Lexden drew attention to the existence of a copy of Graham Sutherland’s remarkable portrait, painted for Churchill’s 80th birthday in 1954, which his wife later arranged to have destroyed.
The number of children in the care of local authorities is rocketing - up from 64,500 in 2010 to nearly 84,000 today. But local authorities, strapped for cash, have cut back their services.
She gave them no peace. A marvellous new book gives the details of her tempestuous relations with them. Alistair Lexden reviewed it in Parliament’s magazine The House on 15 April.
Queen Victoria and Her Prime Ministers: A Personal History
Labour’s plan to slap VAT on independent school fees would hurt (indeed destroy) many schools and harm many pupils—in an attempt to raise money for extra public spending, which would be considerably less than the £1.6 billion they claim.
In March, a superb portrait of Arthur Balfour by the famous portrait painter, Philip de Laszlo, in Trinity College, Cambridge was seriously damaged by vandals claiming to be supporters of the Palestinian cause.
1910 was a year of two general elections, the first in January and the second in December. At both elections the Liberal Party was led by Herbert Asquith, who had been prime minister since 1908.
In mid-March the Garrick Club came under intense fire for excluding women from membership. Questions were asked about other well-known London clubs. Some have changed their rules so women can become members.
December last year brought the centenary of a General Election which had a double significance: it put an end to Stanley Baldwin’s short-lived first Government (Baldwin fought it on the unpopular issue of economic protection), and led to a hung parliament in which the Labour Party formed a Govern
In March 1924, the first Labour Government was in office. Winston Churchill, then a Liberal, had been defeated at the last two general elections. He was desperate to find a way of getting back into the House of Commons.
Between 1967 and 2000 - when homosexuality was no longer a criminal offence in civilian life - some 20,000 gay people were thrown out of the Armed Forces because of their sexuality under discriminatory rules in the services to which they were subject.
