In March 1949 the security service MI5 received notice of a suspect person about to enter Britain and went to great pains to keep her under surveillance. This person was the author Doris Lessing. She would eventually go on to win the Nobel Prize for literature as an "epicist ... who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny". And it was precisely this scrutiny that troubled the guardians of the status quo. Lessing grew up in colonial Rhodesia and hated the scorn with which the colonists treated the native population. She worked tirelessly for a more just society and this drove her into support for communism. But a communist, as one of her fictional characters says, "is hated, despised, feared and hunted". Peter Raina's book, reproducing the secret files kept on Lessing, shows that this was largely true, even though her emphasis in these troubled times was always on Peace. Lessing was eventually disillusioned by communism, and sought a better understanding of human relations than Soviet-conforming cliches could provide. However, her understanding was much enriched by the experiences of her activism and knowledge of the opposition it aroused. The secret files show how strongly Lessing followed her convictions and throw new light on how her perceptions of society evolved. Peter Raina elucidates this in a short Introduction and an Epilogue discussing aspects of her writings.

Just once in a while, actors and performers change the whole way in which they approach the words in their scripts. Such a change happened in the early-to-middle years of the twentieth century; and the person behind it was "Dadie" Rylands. He was a man with an ear acutely attuned to the nuances of poetry, and he insisted that it was the ear and not the eye that mattered most in productions of Shakespeare. It was Rylands who taught an exceptional generation of Shakespearean actors how to speak. Gielgud, Olivier, Ashcroft, Redgrave - all owed their superb diction to him. Moreover, they adored him as a person. Amazingly for a man with such influence, Rylands was not ensconced in the established Theatre. He taught undergraduates at Cambridge and his own productions were with the amateur Marlowe Dramatic Society there. Nor was his life confined to dramatics and the academic world. He was a fringe member of the Bloomsbury set - firm friends with Lytton Strachey, Virginia Woolf and John Maynard Keynes, all regular correspondents. And his circle of notable friends stretched to a wider group of literati including Maurice Bowra and T. S. Eliot. Rylands died, aged 97, in 1999. We no longer have his irrepressible presence, but he left a palpable legacy in gramophone recordings of all Shakespeare's plays in which he directed star-studded casts. Now that legacy is augmented by Peter Raina's study, with its admirable selection of Rylands' marvellously lucid radio talks (hitherto unpublished) and its sampling of the multitude of letters he wrote and received.

This collection of poems by Heinrich von Kleist (1777-1811) translated into modern English rhyming verse by Peter Raina will bring the stature of this contemporary of Goethe and Schiller into sharp focus and will reach a new readership of English speakers across the world. The subjects treated in this anthology include reaction to major political events (particularly Napoleon's incursions into German territory) and patriotic laudatory pieces as well as anti-military sentiments, down to shorter poems, especially the epigrams which explore everyday joys and tribulations. Embarking on this challenging task of translation, the author was inspired by the thoughts of John Sparrow in his book "Great Poetry", Independent Essays: [words in poetry] 'move us simply by their sound and through the appeal of rhythm and metre to the ear'. Peter Raina was thus emboldened to replace the metre he found in the original with a new rhyme and rhythm in his English translation. The effect is a fresh, arresting comment on issues in Kleist's background often not so dissimilar from those we experience today.

Bishop George Bell always felt that the Church must endeavour to meet the problems of the modern world. He was thus foremost in applying the precepts of the Christian faith to national and international issues. George Bell very often raised his voice in the House of Lords (of which he was a distinguished member from December 1937 till January 1958) against class and racial hatred, against war, and against totalitarianism, and spoke for the innocent and helpless victims of persecution. Complete texts of all Bell's House of Lords speeches are presented here, published for the first time in one volume. The issues that Bell tackled are, in essence, still relevant today. This volume also includes unpublished correspondence between George Bell and Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy. After the National Socialists came to power in Germany, Bell, as a committed Christian, felt that he had to act in defence of the German Church, which the Nazis were eager to destroy. The Bishop made strenuous efforts to contact people in power in Germany, people who, he knew, took decisions with momentous consequences. Rudolf Hess was one of them.

At the height of the Second World War, Hitler's Deputy, Rudolf Hess, made a dramatic solo flight to the British Isles. His arrival there was sensational news - and it baffled everyone. Why had he come? Hess claimed he had flown to Britain entirely of his own initiative and was on a personal mission of peace. But so unlikely was the success of such an appeal in Churchill's entrenched Britain that historians continue to wonder at his motives. In this book, Peter Raina publishes, for the first time, complete texts of Hess's 'peace proposals' and a treatise he wrote in captivity outlining how he saw Nazi Germany's role in Europe. These texts throw considerable light on Hess's mission and also on how the Nazi leadership saw their programme of expansion and their relations with Britain. Disconcertingly single-minded and an unashamed disciple of Hitler, Hess was at heart an idealist. His friend and confidant Albrecht Haushofer was an idealist of a different kind, and joined the German Resistance Movement. The frame story of this book relates how the two men moved to their tragic ends.

Volume 3 of Peter Raina's magisterial history covers the 1960s and draws on newly released documents. In astonishing detail, it traces new plans drawn up during the Macmillan-Wilson era to reform the House of Lords. 'Mission impossible,' a civil servant declared. But when, to remain a Commons MP, Tony Benn insisted on disclaiming an inherited peerage, he started off a fresh willingness to tackle old problems. The Peerages Act 1963 allowed peers the option of disclaimer and, at last, gave equal rights in the Upper House to Scottish and women inheritors. A Labour government came in, and in 1967 gained the majority needed to embark on bold legislation. But it feared interference, so comprehensive plans were backed for changing the whole complexion of two-chamber politics. Led by Lord Shackleton and the intellectual Richard Crossman, schemes were devised and inter-party talks got under way - at first in a spirit of cooperation. But had the party elites listened to their fiery back-benchers? When a bill was introduced into parliament, the scenes were unforgettable ... This volume tells not just the story, but reveals the intricate thinking of those who wanted to make a bicameral system work in the age of modern party politics.

Peter Raina's House of Lords Reform recounts the long struggle to bring an ancient institution up to date. The first volume ended in 1937, as crisis overwhelmed Europe. Reform issues were not forgotten, however. This second volume continues the story, presenting a wealth of illuminating records, a great many of them published here for the first time. The 4th Marquess of Salisbury planned changes to the Lords even before the war's end. Further proposals followed after the establishment of the Labour government in 1945. Fearful that its legislation would be blocked, Labour amended the Parliament Act, 1911 to limit the Lords' delaying powers to just one year. Some believed the Upper House would disappear altogether. Salisbury's heir worked hard for preservation, and managed to secure an all-party conference. Its complex schemes and animated discussions are all presented here in original documents. Though the conference failed, Lords Reading, Exeter and Simon continued the effort, with ideas that would eventually bear fruit. They championed the rights of women, self-regulation through standing orders, and the creation of life peers. The Churchill government formed a Lords Reform Committee but could get no further. Then, in an unexpected twist, the cause finally triumphed when Harold Macmillan and the Earl of Home got a one-clause bill through parliament in 1958. The Life Peers Act transformed the nature of British politics.

Albert Venn Dicey (1835-1922) was elected to the Vinerian professorship of English Law in the University of Oxford in 1882. Dicey established himself as a great expert on constitutional history when in 1885 he published his Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, a major classic on the British constitutional system. Dicey's writings have achieved an almost canonical status, and his views are judged almost entirely on this volume. However Dicey developed his views further and extensively in a series of lectures he delivered in the late 1890s in which he focused his thoughts on the sovereignty of Parliament, the relationship between Parliament and the people, and the role of constitutional conventions. Dicey would not defend every detail of the British Constitution, but was quite prepared to consider certain constitutional innovations, such as the principle of referendum to give special status to Constitutional Acts, or that the House of Lords should have more representative legitimacy. Dicey also toyed with the idea of a Constitutional Convention as a basic form of protection for constitutional rules: he argued about constitutional safeguards to remedy the defects of the party system and recognised the adaptability of an unwritten constitution to changed circumstances. All these aspects of Dicey's thought are reflected in these lectures, published here for the first time.

One of the peculiarities of British history is the development of a constitution headed by the Crown and the two Houses of Parliament. This system emerged to become a balance of democracy, efficiency and moderation that became the admiration of the world. The contribution of the House of Lords to this balance is all too often overlooked. In this richly documented two-volume work, the author offers a detailed examination of the Lords' constitutional position and the predicament they faced as the Commons increasingly championed popular rule. With a landowning membership based on the hereditary principle, the Lords struggled to adapt. Yet, valiant attempts were made. The author gives us the first thorough, full-length history of the Lords' ambiguous responses to the new democracy and the stream of arguments, proposals and bills raised for reform of their House. Drawing on speeches, letters, reports and memoranda of the times (some never previously published), the book brings to life the inner wranglings and arresting personalities, the hopes and anxieties and the sheer frustrations of a House divided between entrenched interests and idealism, and often threatened by progressives outside. The two books in Volume One cover the period from the medieval origins of the House of Lords and proceed, through many tumultuous events, to the outbreak of the Second World War.