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Book Review: Britain and Ireland: Parliament: The Biography, Volume I: Ancestral Voices

‘The definitive biography in the English style – lengthy, thoroughly documented, heavily annotated, and generously splashed with quotations – is among the most admirable genres of historiography’, wrote Hannah Arendt in her 1967 book Men in Dark Times. Chris Bryant’s two-volume book Parliament: The Biography is a thoroughly annotated work complete with a wonderful and occasionally weird array of anecdotes. Whether this book is an example of one of the most ‘admirable genres of historiography’ is another question to which we shall shortly return. The author certainly does not lack confidence. Even the title is indicative of the swagger. This is not ‘a’ biography but ‘the’ biography! Such self-confidence is attractive and welcome and it makes the book more entertaining and stimulating. This is an impressive book. It is well-written. It is not a political science tract, it does not delve into details and it consciously rejects any notion of a larger narrative. Bryant – a prominent backbench Labour MP – is adamant that the evolution of Parliament has not followed a preconceived plan. ‘Time and again the hazard of fortune has sat at the table as an extra player’, he notes with the characteristic eloquence of the Anglican clergyman he once was. Bryant is not a proponent of the Whig interpretation of history and all but pours scorn on Victorian writers like the much praised Henry Hallam and his Constitutional History of England. This iconoclastic tendency adds flavour to an already wholesome book. This irreverence from the Reverand Bryant is not the book’s only recommendation. What is perhaps most enjoyable about this tome is the abundance of anecdotes that often serve to prove a point. Bryant’s aversion to an overall narrative is supported by telling stories of how great reforms came about as a result of chance and sheer luck. One of the best examples is the well-known, but long thought to be apocryphal, story of how one of the most important laws ever passed in the history of any legislature secured its passage through the upper house. Bryant tells the anecdote thus: One of the key texts underpinning the freedom against arbitrary arrest, the Habeas Corpus Act 1679, only got through the House of Lords by two votes when the teller for the Ayes counted a fat peer for ten votes.