Parliamentary Reform

This chapter evaluates the large volume of creative scholarship that has reinterpreted and recast our understanding of the ‘heroic age’ of parliamentary reform before the early twentieth century. In doing so, it argues that this varied body of work in itself highlights the value of parliamentary reform as an area for historical research, not least because it has acted as a fertile source of new questions and approaches for political history more generally. Its centrality to accounts of Britain’s political past makes the conspicuous absence of historical accounts of parliamentary reform over the longue durée puzzling. The chapter ends by discussing whether a long-term analysis of parliamentary reform is desirable or possible and examining the potential for historical research into parliamentary reform after 1945.