Democracy Needs Aristocracy

Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, one of Britain's most influential and respected political commentators, argues that Britain's aristocracy has contributed mightily to its stability and prosperity. And yet it is being politically written out of the national story, with the result that soon there will be no hereditary peers in the House of Lords. The disestablishment of the peerage will bring cheers to the lips of many, but in this passionately argued and highly original essay, Worsthorne argues that Britain once had an upper class which was the envy of the world, and which, crucially, had built-in authority and ancestral wisdom honed over three centuries.