Tag: Hansard

17th Century history, Early modern history, History of Parliament Trust, James I to Restoration, Reporting Parliament

Silence and Laughter in the Cromwellian House of Commons

On our blog we have often heard about the origins of the many strange and enduring traditions that exist within Westminster. In today’s blog Dr Patrick Little from our Commons 1640-1660 project takes a look at the use of non-verbal reactions within the Cromwellian Commons Chamber… When trying to understand debates in early modern Parliaments, historians rely on diaries: the private journals kept by individual … Continue reading Silence and Laughter in the Cromwellian House of Commons

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19th Century history, 20th century history, History of Parliament Trust

Parliament and the Naval Review

In today’s blog our director Dr Paul Seaward is casting his eyes out to sea, with a look into the popularity of the Naval Review in the late 19th century. However, these displays of British maritime power weren’t always smooth sailing… There had been irregular naval reviews since the 1770s, sometimes with mock sea-battles, laid on to entertain the royal family and to display the … Continue reading Parliament and the Naval Review

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17th Century history, 18th Century history, 19th Century history

A History of Parliamentary Cucumbers

Our friends at Hansard at Huddersfield provide a great tool for tracking the popularity of certain words in parliamentary debate. It is unsurprising that the use of ‘deal’ and ‘Brexit’ have been common over the last few years, but, as Dr Patrick Little from our Commons 1640-1660 project explores below, there is one word little used in the chamber… cucumbers. Dr Samuel Johnson (1709-84) is … Continue reading A History of Parliamentary Cucumbers

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18th Century history, Named Parliaments, Reporting Parliament

‘A blank in the History of the country’: The ‘Unreported Parliament’ 1768-74

Today Dr Robin Eagles, editor of our House of Lords 1715-1790 section continues with our Named Parliaments blog theme… Throughout the early part of the 18th century Parliament periodically enforced its jealously guarded right of secrecy by prosecuting printers for publishing details of debates and occasionally turning out ‘strangers’ from the galleries. The response was, though, inconsistent and there were periods during which publishers were … Continue reading ‘A blank in the History of the country’: The ‘Unreported Parliament’ 1768-74

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19th Century history, 20th century history, Economic history, Legal history, Post-1945 history, Reporting Parliament, Social history, Women and Parliament

Hansard at Huddersfield: Making democracy more searchable

Today’s post is a guest blog from Lesley Jeffries of the University of Huddersfield. Lesley explains the Hansard at Huddersfield project which aims to provide some interesting search facilities and visualisations of the results from the record of the UK parliament. I am a linguist working on the language of texts – from poetry to politics – and I sometimes work on what we linguists … Continue reading Hansard at Huddersfield: Making democracy more searchable

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20th century history, Post-1945 history, Reporting Parliament

Reporting Parliament: Hansard, Throwback Thursday

Today in our ‘Reporting Parliament’ series for Parliament Week, we have a guestblog from the team at Hansard. Here they have recorded the ‘day in the life’ of a Hansard reporter, now and thirty years ago… 2017: Thursday, 9 am I’m on the bus to work, flicking between cat memes and the Hansard website on my iPhone to read last night’s work. I scan today’s … Continue reading Reporting Parliament: Hansard, Throwback Thursday

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19th Century history, 20th century history, Conferences/seminars, Post-1945 history

Parliaments, Politics and People seminar: Luke Blaxill, ‘Big data’ and the analysis of parliamentary and platform speeches, 1880-present

In the first ‘Parliaments, Politics and People’ Seminar of 2016, Dr Luke Blaxill (Hertford College, Oxford) spoke on ‘‘Big data’ and the analysis of parliamentary and platform speeches, 1880-present’. Here he discusses his paper… My paper made the argument that almost all modern historians – and perhaps especially political historians – are increasingly surrounded by huge digitised textual collections which are too large to read, … Continue reading Parliaments, Politics and People seminar: Luke Blaxill, ‘Big data’ and the analysis of parliamentary and platform speeches, 1880-present

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'The Story of Parliament', 18th Century history, 19th Century history

The ‘Story of Parliament’: Parliament and the press

Earlier this year the History published ‘The Story of Parliament: Celebrating 750 years of parliament in Britain’ to mark the anniversary of Simon de Montfort’s parliament in 1265. The book is a brief introduction to the full 750 years of parliamentary history, aimed at the general reader, and available to purchase from the Houses of Parliament bookshop – a great Christmas present for the parliamentary … Continue reading The ‘Story of Parliament’: Parliament and the press

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