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There can't be many occasions when news of someone's elevation (sic) to the House of Lords sends a ripple of pleasure through the political world. But the arrival of Peter Hennessey, Attlee Professor of Contemporary British History, , will surely be one.

He's the master analyst of British public policy - and has forgotten more about the way our system works than many cabinet ministers ever discover. More than that, he's an interviewer's dream - entertaining as well as incisive.

I had the pleasure of interviewing him for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Parliament's BOOKtalk about his newly updated book, back in the summer.

He was able to make frankly terrifying material about how Britain would have responded to nuclear attack fascinating and morbidly funny. Did you know that nuclear scientists working for the MoD included a "spot the mushroom cloud" competition in their super-secret house magazine, in which contestants had to guess where a nuclear weapon had detonated, in order to produce a particular pattern of fallout? Tee hee, the long weeks in the bunkers would have just flown by.

He has written about Whitehall, the prime ministers, the British constitution and he has traced public policy through the 1940s and 1950s, and is soon to dispose of the 1960s too. So, in the best tradition of the Lords, he has a huge amount of knowledge to deploy - the only snag is that many of the sources for his best information will be sitting around him in the Upper House, a legion of elder statespersons, senior civil servants and diplomats and academics, which might constrain his muse a little.

* Also appointed: Sheila Hollins, professor in psychiatry of disability at St George's, University of London. Her research has focussed on clinical and social aspects of the mental and physical health of people with learning disabilities, with a particular focus on bereavement, palliative care and sexual abuse. She practised as a consultant psychiatrist and also co-authored a book with her husband, Martin Hollins, You and Your Child with a Learning Disability.

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