Political Advice

Jacqueline Rose is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of St Andrews. She is the author of Godly Kingship in Restoration England: The Politics of the Royal Supremacy (2011), which won the Whitfield Prize of the Royal Historical Society. Her recent research has been in the field of counsel and advice, and she was the editor of The Politics of Counsel in England and Scotland 1286-1707, published by the British Academy in 2016. Colin Kidd is Wardlaw Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He is the author of five books including Subverting Scotland’s Past (1993), Union and Unionisms (2008), and The World of Mr Casaubon (2016). He is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books and the Guardian.

Excellently quirky.

• Foreword: Political advising - Lord Butler1. Political advice: Past, present – and future? - Colin Kidd and Jacqueline Rose2. What would Perikles do, and why it still matters – asking the ancient Greek gods for political advice - Esther Eidinow3. Obliquus ductus: Indirect political advice in the Renaissance - Joanne Paul4. How not to do it: Poets and counsel, Thomas Wyatt to Geoffrey Hill - Colin Burrow5. William Davison and the perils of advice in Elizabethan England - Jacqueline Rose6. The parliamentary way of counsel - Paul Seaward7. Smith as spad? Adam Smith and advice to politicians - Jesse Norman8. A mirror for princes? British orientalists and the Persian Question - Ali M. Ansari9. Reflections on the Central Policy Review Staff - William Waldegrave10. Astrology and advice at the Reagan court - Colin Kidd11. You’ve got to ask the right expert: Who gives political advice? - Marius S. Ostrowski12. Advice in a time of belief: Civil service impartiality in two referendums - Jim Gallagher13. Advising Trump - Rob Goodman14. Managing the growing tension between politics and governance: Hard choices ahead for Whitehall and Westminster - Martin Donnelly