The Origins of the English Parliament 924-1327, J. R. Maddicott (Oxford University Press, 2010) xv, 526pp., hardback, £30, ISBN 978 0 19 958550 2

J. R. Maddicott, a Fellow of the British Academy and former joint editior of the English Historical Review, was Fellow and Tutor of Exeter College, Oxford, from 1969 to 2006.  He gave the Ford Lectures in 2004 and it is from these that this book has developed.

This is an innovative and meticulously scholarly work which obliges historians to revise views on the early history of the central institution of our democracy.  It has been usual to ascribe the beginnings of Parliament of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.  Maddicott demonstrates that in fact it began to emerge in the late Anglo-Saxon period and he shows how such political events such as Magna Carta influenced institutional change.  From the beginning Parliament was a resolutely political body; shaped by some unforeseen events and episodes - the Norman Conquest, the wars of Richard I and John, and the long minority of Henry III as well as Magna Carta which established the requirement of general consent to taxation.

This study covers the period between the accession of King Athelstan and the deposition of King Edward II but the availability of sources has meant that the emphasis has been between 1215 (Magna Carta) and 1327.

The book is attractively written and fully documented.  There is a list of abbreviations, a particularly extensive bibliography and equally fine index.  It is modestly priced as well.  It deserves to become a classic.

G.R. Batho