Jim Dowd, MP for Lewisham until 2017, entertained us in November with his observations on MPs and their writings. We were interested to learn that fiction was generally their preference until the Crossman diaries were published, after which memoirs and non-fiction have become much more popular. Jim also reminded us that writing and speaking are such key skills for MPS that it is not surprising to find so many authors in Parliament from the past and present, including Sheridan, Disraeli, Jeffrey Archer, and those authors we usually forget were also MPs such as Byron.