March this year brought the fortieth anniversary of Airey Neave’s murder. It was marked by the publication of a biography by Patrick Bishop, which I reviewed for Parliament’s House Magazine and, at slightly greater length, for the ConservativeHome website.

On I August (see below )in the aftermath of the conviction of Carl Beech (better known as ‘Nick the fantasist’), Alistair Lexden renewed his call for an independent inquiry into the investigation of allegations against Sir Edward Heath.

In 1992, Robert Blake, the distinguished historian and biographer, compiled The Sayings of Disraeli, a slim volume containing the famous Tory leader’s timeless observations on life and politics.

On 22 July, Carl Beech, who gained notoriety under the pseudonym ‘Nick’, was sentenced to eighteen years’ imprisonment for fraud and perverting the course of justice.

During the last four years, outrage has been expressed in many quarters—ecclesiastical, academic, political and journalistic—about the Church of England’s appalling  treatment of one of its greatest bishops, George Bell.  An important new book underlines Bell’s enduring significance on the world

“The Conservative Party is the national party or it is nothing”, Disraeli famously declared in 1867. Its duty to represent the interests of the whole nation was, however, first set out by the man whose career Disraeli destroyed, Sir Robert Peel, as Alistair Lexden pointed out in a letter in The Daily Telegraph on July 26.

Harold Macmillan’s dismissal of seven members of his Cabinet in 1962 was unprecedented. On July 24, Boris Johnson sacked eleven. Alistair Lexden described what is now the second biggest Cabinet purge in a letter in The Times on July 26.

Homosexuals are treated as criminals in 37 of the 53 countries of the Commonwealth. In some of them extremely harsh punishments are available to the courts.

For many years Alistair Lexden, then Alistair Cooke, was the Deputy Director of the Conservative Research Department.

In early July, the Government introduced  a very short Bill to give it yet more time to try and restore the Assembly and Executive in Northern Ireland, which collapsed two and a half years ago.