The best moment to see the Lords is at Question Time, which starts at

two thirty–five on every day that they sit.  Your first impression is

probably of the chamber itself: rich, solemn, encrusted with decoration,

dominated at one end by the blaze of gold which is the throne: on all

occasions except the State opening of Parliament, an empty seat.    Red

is the colour: it has been since the sixteenth century. 

Look a little more closely, and you will start to think that architecture is telling you something.  There are knights in the canopy above the throne,

knightly figures (in fact Magna Cart barons) along the walls between

the windows, frescoes (if you look for them) showing the Black Prince

and other chivalric heroes, all manner of heraldic devices in the

ceiling, if only distance and the bright lights necessary for the

television cameras would let you see them.   Valour is interwoven with

religion, since much of the ornament, with it angels and other carving,

might have come from a church.  A big fresco above the throne depicts

the Baptism of King Ethelbert by St Augustine.  As represented through

the decoration, this is an Upper House for saints and heroes. 

But then regard the peers, sitting on their leather benches in rows,

rather as though they were in a particularly well–appointed railway

carriage.  Unexpectedly, perhaps, every seat on the benches is taken.  In

the middle of the room, in front of the throne, reposes the rather lonely

figure of the Lord Chancellor, isolated both by his position on the

woolsack and the unusual circumstance of his wearing a long grey wig. (Remember, I wrote this before the Blair reforms outlawed the Lord Chancellor’s stockings.  In fact abolished the Lord Chancellor altogether.  He’s been replaced by the Lord Speaker.) There are three clerks, also in gowns and wigs: short wigs but of different styles, either soft and round like a powder puff or rolled into hard curls.  Around them peers who cannot fit onto the benches have lodged themselves on any available surface.  Some stand at the bar: so to speak, the altar rail that separates the holy of holies from the outside world.  Peers speak; ministers answer; most of the figures on the benches sit immobile as effigies.  But there is also a constant

current of movement, as the chief whip passes a note to one of the

clerks and a doorkeeper, immensely grand in his tail coat, white tie and

gilt chain –– far better turned out than any of the peers –– scans the

faces of those present to deliver a message.  At the end of each reply, a

handful of peers half rise to their feet, then subside again, deferring

with good–humoured, if sometimes over–elaborate, courtesy to the one¿

of their number upon whom it falls to ask the next question.  The

constant bustle suggests a station waiting room when the train is

about to move off.

Ignore all the movement, and even the questions, and run your eyes

along those robustly upholstered benches.  They present a remarkable

study in physiognomy.  The rich panelling, with its endlessly repeating

linenfold, could almost have been designed for the display of heads.

There are heads of all kinds: some familiar from political stardom and

media appearances, some unknown outside the chamber, some

intellectual, some etiolated, some fleshly, some shrunken, some

bearded with a profusion one had thought to have gone out of fashion

with the daguerreotype, some of an singularity so marked as to be

unbelievable at first sight.  The character and variety of these heads is

really one of the wonders of Britain.  They show individuality.  Often

they bear the impress of years, and are none the worse for it.  These

are not the septuagenarian baby faces that one sees, for example, in the

United States, from whose tanned surface all evidence of past

struggles has been erased; the physiognomy of Britain’s peers is, on the

whole, an essay in long experience.  Here we have what might be

described as a whole menagerie of facial types, from marmoset to

marsupial, from ox to osprey, from collie dog to camel.  There are peers

who are squirrels,  peers who are reptiles, peers who are tufted owls.

A menagerie or an aquarium: the gene pool from which they are fished

is, quite obviously, deep indeed. 

Some peers inherit their titles, some are appointed by the prime

minister of the day for life.  It is for god, rather than man, to say

whether this assembly possesses wisdom, but it certainly forms a

repository of specialist knowledge.  ‘There is more expertise per

square foot here than in any forum in the world,’ says the rabbinical

scholar Lord Jakobovits.  He finds that he must put more effort into

preparing a speech for the Lords than for a learned society.  Lady

Thatcher, who never seemed to have much time for the Lords when she

was Prime Minister, now says there is ‘better talent here, particularly

in the sciences, than in the House of Commons’.  The talent takes

various kinds, balancing knowledge of world of politics and men with

expertise in science, foreign affairs, agriculture, the arts, justice and

religion, which can in turn be broken down into a thousand specialisms

from pesticides to fine art auctioneering.

More on the wide-ranging expertise of the hereditary peers in my blog for the Daily Mail.  I see that Oxfam in Wallingford are offering a good deal on a second hand copy of the book if you're interested.