On 15 December 1882, an Irishman, Myles Joyce, was hanged for the murder of a family of five in Maamtrasna on the Mayo/Galway border. He was an Irish speaker; the trial was conducted in English which he did not understand.
2019 brings the 190th anniversary of full Catholic emancipation. Parliament’s House Magazine marked the anniversary by publishing, in slightly amended form, Alistair Lexden’s review of an outstanding book by Antonia Fraser which first appeared last year.
Secondary or delegated legislation takes the form of statutory instruments which stem from Acts of Parliament—primary legislation—and give effect to detailed legal changes.
An article in The Times on February 14 featured the brilliant comic writer, Richmal Crompton, whose famous William books, of which some 12 million have been sold, have given enormous pleasure to generations of children.
These dramatic events were discussed by Alistair Lexden at a dinner in the Carlton Club in February 2018 (see below). He considered them at greater length in a lecture delivered at the annual meeting of the Lloyd George Society in Llandrindod Wells on 16 February.
An obsessive preoccupation with a few, well-known independent schools produces a wholly misleading impression of the overall state of independent education in Britain today, endlessly repeated in the national media.
In a Lords debate on 1 February, Alistair Lexden returned briefly to an issue on which he has spoken out strongly in recent months, most notably in speeches on 18 January this year and on 20 July 2018 (see below).
Detailed research by historians has shattered the long prevalent myth that Baldwin failed to stand up to Hitler. However, the truth has yet to be fully recognised in some quarters. An article published inThe Times on 29 January was a case in point.
