Originally published in 1958, the essential purpose of this book was to present a picture of the unreformed House of Lords at work as part of the effective system of government in Britain at the time, going back to the passing of the Parliament Act of 1911. When the Parliament Act of 1911 was passed, both its advocates and its opponents expected that it would soon be replaced by a comprehensive reform both of the powers and of the composition of the House of Lords. The previous forty years had in fact seen innumerable proposals, modest and ambitious, in Parliament and Party Conferences, but all had been abortive. The powers of the House had been left unchanged until 1958, except by the new Parliament Act of 1949, which merely modified the provisions of the old by reducing from three sessions to two the Lords’ power to delay bills passed by the Commons. The Life Peerages Act, discussed in this book, which authorised the creation of life baronies with no numerical limits, was passed in 1958.

This fully revised new edition includes expanded coverage of Parliament's relationship with the courts, devolved assemblies and the European Union. Distinctively, the book goes beyond the usual focus of Parliament-Government relations to encompass policy-makers beyond Whitehall and Parliament's broader relationship with citizens.

Painting a detailed portrait of the House of Lords since reform removed most hereditary members in 1999, this book demonstrates the chamber's newly diverse membership and substantial policy impact in British politics. It also places the Lords in a comparative context, asks if it can be considered 'legitimate', and examines the likelihood of reform.

A stunning collection that traverses the borders of culture and time, from the 2011 winner of the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award In House of Lords and Commons, the revelatory and vital new collection of poems from the winner of the 2013 Whiting Writers’ Award in poetry, Ishion Hutchinson returns to the difficult beauty of the Jamaican landscape with remarkable lyric precision. Here, the poet holds his world in full focus but at an astonishing angle: from the violence of the seventeenth-century English Civil War as refracted through a mythic sea wanderer, right down to the dark interior of love. These poems arrange the contemporary continuum of home and abroad into a wonderment of cracked narrative sequences and tumultuous personae. With ears tuned to the vernacular, the collection vividly binds us to what is terrifying about happiness, loss, and the lure of the sea. House of Lords and Commons testifies to the particular courage it takes to wade unsettled, uncertain, and unfettered in the wake of our shared human experience.