Not just interrogatories either. I found this great set of 18th Century plans of The Angel Inn on Wych Street, Westminster.

Well, quite.

Pour chaque dollar dépensé pour protéger la nature, 30 dollars financent sa destruction

Given the main parliamentary rule about what you can and can't do is "you have to write it down", just a really low bar not being met here.

The real issue here - of course ignored by the Policy Exchange paper to which @joshuarozenberg.bsky.social refers - was brilliantly summarised by @profmarkelliott.bsky.social in his piece here publiclawforeveryone.com/2025/07/09/t....

The longest-serving MP ever, Villiers featured in our post on MPs and longevity: victoriancommons.wordpress.com/2014/01/16/l...

This week's piece includes my quiet fantasy about Robert Jenrick. Can you guess what it is? howtorunacountry.substack.com/p/what-if-yo...

If you want more stories about naked people on Parliament Hill (or just fun Speaker stories) - my forthcoming book '"Unparliamentary" is the one for you! Available for pre-order now through @uoftpress.bsky.social (Canada) or other fine booksellers abroad utppublishing.com/doi/book/10....

📣 We’re hiring! The History of Parliament are seeking a Research Fellow for our House of Lords 1660-1832 project. @georgianlords.bsky.social We’re looking for a historian with a PhD in 18thC British political or cultural history to join our expert team. 🔗 Details below: #AcademicJobs #HistoryJobs

That's not good, right.

14 Jan 1610: Sidney Godolphin, #poet, courtier & politician MP 1628, 1640-41 - one of the last royalist members to leave the house, warning as he went 'When the cards are shuffled, no man knows what the game will be'. Shot on 8 Feb 1643, buried in Okehampton 10 Feb 1643 (NPG)

2025 was an exceptional year for the Earth's climate ⬆️ Warmest ocean heat content ⬆️ Tied as second warmest surface temps ⬆️ Second warmest troposphere ⬆️ Record high sea level and GHGs ⬇️ Record low winter Arctic ice New State of the Climate over at Carbon Brief: www.carbonbrief.org/...

I recently had the opportunity to explore the manuscripts of Goswin Arnould de Wynants, lawyer, judge and member of the High Council for the Netherlands in Vienna under Emperor Charles VI. The contribution below focuses on #jurisdiction and #taxation. ⬇️ dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn...

Louise Hollandine, Princess Palatine, Self-portrait holding a paintbrush, c. 1650, oil on panel (formerly Sotheby’s)

🚨 Exclusive: Tony Blair isn’t just a big fan of AI — he's now trying to build and sell AI tools to governments Tony Blair Institute staff have described the plan as 'insane' and compared it to Palantir New by D4S and @lighthousereports.com 🧵 democracyforsale.substack.com/p/blair-bids...

What role should parliaments play before, during, and after a crisis or emergency? With the Institute for Government and the UCL Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism, we have put together an amazing lineup. /1 @efieldingd.bsky.social @timdurrant.bsky.social @drhannahwhite.bsky.social

Once upon a time I started writing A User’s Guide to Thucydides, which may be helpful, but again it’s out of date and I never got round to finishing it… thesphinxblog.com/2015/01/31/u...

Had expected to find some useful links in this online reading list I put together, but (1) it’s now quite out of date and (2) back in 2017 the focus was on the so-called Thucydides Trap much more than the Melian Dialogue: eidolon.pub/thucydides-a...

Since he isn’t, now’s as good a time as any:

Provision against fake news, Statute of Westminster I, 1275 (3 Edw. I, c. 34)

Ditto, the pre and post recording conversations with my predecessors as New Statesman political editor, we all had different politics, different owners, but essentially our complaints and experiences...the same institutional 'soul' as it were.

This is very good

Looks to be plenty of sense in here, albeit some points I'm a bit sceptical on. Interested to hear views of other who've worked in Government (eg @jembenson.bsky.social , @ukcivilservant.bsky.social , @oldtrotter.bsky.social , @carlgardner.bsky.social). bsky.app/profile/samf...

In June 2025, The Hague celebrated 400 years De Iure Belli ac Pacis. A massive Grotiana issue @degruyterbrill.bsky.social publishes several papers from this gathering, including one by your humble servant on three handwritten essays from the French Foreign Office. brill.com/view/journal...

West Papua Indonesia Earth's oldest living eco system existing for at least 70 million years Look at the 292 square Kilometers of ancient forest cleared in just 21 months Now army brought in to fast track 5 million more acres www.ft.com/content/27a6...

December 1825: the Liverpool Mercury wants you to know about the exciting new Christmas parlour game

The argument here needs to move beyond "caps popular" to where replacement funding comes from (public funding) - otherwise we're just not going to see any progress.

Yeah exactly - I'm interested in reimbursement angles because that appears in similar candidate-based systems like Canada and Australia but hasn't appeared a lot in the UK arguments. I think in practice three or four different mechanisms rather than a European-style "here's money for votes".

Did medieval people buy each other Christmas gifts? New Year's Day was the main gifting day, but little is known about everyday people's present giving. Our project on London's customs records has uncovered a wealth of affordable items imported around this time: gloves and hats to toys and rattles🧵

"Digital twins represent the early architecture of a potential alternative representational infrastructure."

Glad this is out -- used it in my final lecture of the year

ON THE BLOG: A ‘shopping list of autocratic actions’: what would-be autocrats do to recede democracy Joep van Lit and Carolien van Ham explain 7 key modes of ‘autocratisation’ and their ‘shopping list’ of autocratic behaviours, which offers a practical resource to recognise early warning signs.

Ministers have watered down a legal requirement for housebuilders to create more woodlands, wetlands and other habitats than they destroy, drawing criticism from environmentalists and businesses

'What we have lost, and what we desperately need to reclaim, is a different mode of cognition, a historical sensibility....t is a temperament that is comfortable with uncertainty, sensitive to context and aware of the powerful, often unpredictable rhythms of the past.'

For fellow devolution anoraks and legislature lovers, this is an interesting topic but one which arguably applies to legislatures in many jurisdictions (including elsewhere in the UK) rather than being a uniquely Holyrood problem www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Catriona Mullay: A Fresh Start, the Old Tradition: Sovereignty and the Scottish Constitutional Imaginary ukconstitutionallaw.org/2025/12/11/c...

Great to see our colleague @martinspychal.bsky.social's book Mapping the State reviewed by Matthew Roberts as 'a work of impressive scholarship which deserves to be widely read'. Mapping the State is available on Open Access here: uolpress.co.uk/book/mapping...

A most unusual perspective in this picture by William Nicholson, painted on an Atlantic crossing and on show in his retrospective at Pallant House, Chichester: Sport on the SS Cedric (1921, Estate of Mirabel Cecil). Read about the exhibition on our blog: art-exhibitions.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-...

This is a good thread on why political parties matter, but wanted to draw out this point as a reason why 'candidate diversity' matters, in that our life and career experiences will shape what the three or four things MPs know about (and are therefore most likely to rebel or be influential on).

Its Miscellany Monday! Here's Kesselring, "The Court of Star Chamber's Record(s) and Reports (2021): legalhistorymiscellany.com/2021/10/10/r...

"The Baltic world and Nordic region have never figured prominently in the historiography of medieval & early modern Europe." My 1 semester at Uppsala was a reality check about the scale of this marginalization! This book by @adamgeorgie.bsky.social looks like a welcome part of the correction.

This letter from former Cabinet Secretaries and others is straightforwardly wrong regarding the constitutional role of the House of Lords relative to the role of the Commons. /1

The Figure of the Politician in Modern and Contemporary Europe, edited by Pasi Ihalainen, Rosario López @rosariolopez.bsky.social, Kari Palonen, and Henk te Velde has now been published! Find out more here: bit.ly/49BK15x Review by @pseaward.bsky.social #History #PeaceStudies #ConflictStudies

21 years ago today I thought, huh, looks interesting, and created a Wikipedia account. Things sort of snowballed from there. It's been fun. 21 thoughts on Wikipedia, in no particular order: 🧵