The appointment of a Sinn Fein first minister in Northern Ireland has led to speculation that a united Ireland is now a serious prospect. Alistair Lexden rejected that view in a letter published in The Daily Telegraph on 3 February.
This was a skill that the most senior royal courtiers needed until recently. Some managed better than others, as Alistair Lexden noted in a letter published in The Daily Telegraph on 20 January.
The attached article was published in Parliament’s magazine The House, to which Alistair Lexden contributes regularly, on 15 January. It is an abridged – and slightly amended—version of an essay about the origins of the Conservative Party which was posted on this site last month.
For over five years Alistair Lexden has been campaigning alongside others to get an independent inquiry into a deeply flawed police investigation of child sexual abuse allegations against Ted Heath.
The modern histories of the Conservative Party do not provide a full account of how it first came into being as the Tory Party in the early 1680s. This essay attempts to fill the gap. It describes the events from which the Party emerged and how it got its name.
Few people have come under more sustained attack . Some have accused him of being a Nazi collaborator. The King’s side of the story, drawing on hitherto unpublished notes and memoranda which he left behind, appears in an important new book.
George Osborne, Chairman of the British Museum Trustees, has been in discussion with the Greek Government for some time about a loan. Alistair Lexden brought this contentious issue before the House of Lords on 14 December when he opened a short debate on it.
The Labour Party want us to believe that they deserve all the credit, constantly boasting that Nye Bevan was the sole architect of the NHS. But Labour only completed work that had been begun by a Conservative Health Minister, adding a few socialist frills of their own.
Writing in The Spectator about the State Opening of Parliament on 7 November, Charles Moore, now a colleague in the Lords, mentioned that he was seated near “Lord (Andrew) Roberts of Belgravia, wrapped copiously in what he tells me were the oldest robes in the chamber, lent to him by Lord Willoug
