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Arena of Ambition; Icon Books 418 pp; £25.00 stg; by Stephen Parkinson

IN BRITAIN, the expenses claims made by MPs for moat-clearing, non-existent mortgages, ornamental duck houses and the like have generated much appalled comment. Yet it is worth remembering that the House of Commons and its members were once held in higher regard. In Victorian England, working-class men even formed debating societies deliberately modelled on the lower house at Westminster. Rather posher, longer-established and more elaborate than these proletarian associations were the Oxford and Cambridge Union Societies, the latter being the subject of Stephen Parkinson’s diverting book. Founded by undergraduates in 1815, the Cambridge Union held formal debates on the topics of the day, adopting parliamentary-style nomenclature and conventions, from the layout of the chamber (despatch boxes and all), to motions of no confidence.