Westminster: a Biography: From Earliest Times to the Present
Author(s): Robert Shepherd (Author)
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication Date: 27 Sept. 2012
Edition: First Edition
Language: English
Print length: 432 pages
ISBN-10: 0826423809
ISBN-13: 9780826423801
Book Description
This is the remarkable story of Westminster, a royal capital that became the birthplace of parliamentary government and the centre of a world power. It is about the place, its people and their close relationship. They have made and shaped one another. The ancient heart of Westminster is only the size of a village, yet it boasts world famous buildings: the Abbey, the Houses of Parliament and Number 10 Downing Street. As befits a village, Westminster is rich in folklore and gossip, yet its story is central to Britain’s history and anywhere that has parliamentary government.
This biography of Westminster traces the extraordinary transformation of a secluded island on the banks of the Thames into a spiritual centre, a royal ceremonial stage and a political capital. It brings to life the monarchs and prime ministers for whom Westminster has been home, the architects and writers whom it inspired, and the protestors and rebels whom it provoked. It is a tale of inspiration, intrigue, power, protest and terror.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Almost too much history for a single mind to absorb has happened above the sand and gravel of Thorney Island. Yet, in Robert Shepherd, a very fine mind has sifted the archaeological, institutional, political and human débris with such skill and clarity that the rest of us can absorb this abundant Wesminster ‘biography’; with pleasure and instruction. As someone who works in the great gothic Palace which rests upon that history-soaked reef, I shall never look upon my patch in the same way again. –Professor the Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield FBA
This is the sort of scintillating book that I would want to write, had I the wit or half the wisdom. –Michael Dobbs (Lord Dobbs of Wylye)
Shepherd combines intense scholarship with gentle humour. He has the penetrating faculty of describing each tree while never losing sight of the wood. –Matthew Parris, Times columnist, BBC broadcaster and former MP
[Shepherd] has written an entertaining life of the village that spins on its own axis. –The Spectator
Well researched … the book is at its best [when the] narrative is leavened with surprising anecdotes. –The Sunday Times
A fascinating account of the development of a religious, royal and Parliamentary village. –Keith Simpson, MP, The House Magazine
Well researched … the book is at its best [when the] narrative is leavened with surprising anecdotes. –The Sunday Times
About the Author
Rob Shepherd was Reuter Fellow at the University of Oxford and is now a programme editor for BBC television and radio producing on Straight Talk with Andrew Neil. He has been a Special Adviser in Whitehall, a parliamentary lobby correspondent and an award-winning television producer whose fly-on-the-wall documentary for Channel Four, filmed inside Number 10, the Cabinet and the Foreign Office won Europe’s Prix Stendhal. His gripping account of the plotting that brought down Margaret Thatcher in 1990, The Power Broker Brokers: The Tory Party and its Leaders, is rated as ‘required reading’ by The Times and ‘way ahead in the field’. He has written acclaimed biographies of Enoch Powell and Iain Macleod. He collaborated on John Biffen’s book, Inside the House of Commons: Behind the Scenes at Westminster, and Jim Prior’s memoirs, The Balance of Power and a contributor to the New Dictionary of National Biography and the Oxford Companion to 20th-century British Politics.
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