Continuing his campaign to secure justice for sibling couples by means of an oral question in the Lords on 21 March , Alistair Lexden asked the government whether it had plans to take the action that is needed.

A strong case can be made for replacing the existing unelected House of Lords by an upper chamber with a membership determined by the votes of the people. But the value of the work done by the Lords today should not be underestimated.

On 15 March, Alistair Lexden returned to his campaign on behalf of sibling couples who have made their lives together in jointly owned property.

That was the theme of an article by Alistair Lexden in a special spring schools supplement to The Spectator, published on 16 March.

The Commons vote of 149 against Mrs May’s EU withdrawal agreement on 12 March was described in many parts of the media as the fourth worst government defeat ever.

How did the Tories, who described themselves proudly as the party of Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, get themselves into a state of civil war over our membership of the European Union?

On 12 March, the Lords discussed two important Northern Ireland Bills under highly unsatisfactory fast-track procedures, which Alistair Lexden criticised strongly in his speech during the debate.

On March 9, The Times reported that a letter from Queen Victoria to Tennyson was up for auction in New York. For years it had been available in Lincoln, with other lettters, to historians of the period.

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.

The following letter was published in The Daily Telegraph on 1 March under the heading, “That’s my Baby”.