Here is the latest nomination in our series highlighting people David Cameron should consider appointing to the House of Lords.
If you would like to nominate someone, please email Jonathan Isaby with your suggestion, ideally including key arguments for the nomination as well as biographical information. The sources of nominations will be treated confidentially where requested.
No. 14: Andrew Roberts
Paul Oakley writes:
"Expelled from Cranleigh for vandalism, Andrew Roberts went on to become an honorary senior scholar at Gonville and Caius College. He experienced the real world of corporate finance before writing acclaimed biographies of Halifax and Salisbury. An enthusiastic Churchillian, his recent researches in the Cambridge Archives disclosed unconsidered War Cabinet documents which give new insights to the challenges of 1941.
"He has pointed out that the Empire was not, overall, a Bad Thing and is thus attacked by the left as a revisionist. Nevertheless, he has been unflinchingly critical of its failures, his devastating critique of Mountbatten's partition of India being the prime example.
"A trustee of the Margaret Thatcher Archive Trust, member of The Freedom Association Council and supporter of the Bruges Group, he would be a worthy successor to Lord Blake.
"I shall instruct him to write my biography in due course."
If understanding the past helps us to understand the present and future, then having an historian like Andrew Roberts in the Lords would only serve to improve the quality of debate and discussion in the Upper House. It shoud also be noted that he chaired the Conservative Party's Advisory Panel on the Teaching of History in Schools in 2005.
Jonathan Isaby
> Yesterday's nomination: Simon Wolfson
