Not to be confused with the Parliament of Great Britain. The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland known as the UK Parliament, British Parliament or Westminster Parliament, as well as domestically as Parliament or Westminster, is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown dependencies and the British Overseas Territories, it alone possesses legislative supremacy and thereby ultimate power over all other political bodies in the UK and the overseas territories. Parliament is bicameral but has three parts, consisting of the Sovereign, the House of Lords, the House of Commons; the two houses meet in the Palace of Westminster in the City of Westminster, one of the inner boroughs of the capital city, London. The House of Lords includes two different types of members: the Lords Spiritual, consisting of the most senior bishops of the Church of England, the Lords Temporal, consisting of life peers, appointed by the Sovereign on the advice of the Prime Minister, of 92 hereditary peers, sitting either by virtue of holding a royal office, or by being elected by their fellow hereditary peers.

Prior to the opening of the Supreme Court in October 2009, the House of Lords performed a judicial role through the Law Lords. The House of Commons is an elected chamber with elections to 650 single member constituencies held at least every five years under the first-past-the-post system; the two Houses meet in separate chambers in the Palace of Westminster in London. By constitutional convention, all government ministers, including the Prime Minister, are members of the House of Commons or, less the House of Lords and are thereby accountable to the respective branches of the legislature. Most cabinet ministers are from the Commons, whilst junior ministers can be from either House. However, the Leader of the House of Lords must be a peer; the Parliament of Great Britain was formed in 1707 following the ratification of the Treaty of Union by Acts of Union passed by the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland, both Acts of Union stating, "That the United Kingdom of Great Britain be represented by one and the same Parliament to be styled The Parliament of Great Britain."

At the start of the 19th century, Parliament was further enlarged by Acts of Union ratified by the Parliament of Great Britain and the Parliament of Ireland that abolished the latter and added 100 Irish MPs and 32 Lords to the former to create the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 formally amended the name to the "Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland," five years after the secession of the Irish Free State in 1922. With the global expansion of the British Empire, the UK Parliament has shaped the political systems of many countries as ex-colonies and so it has been called the "Mother of Parliaments." However, John Bright – who coined the epithet – used it in reference to the political culture of England rather than just the parliamentary system. In theory, the UK's supreme legislative power is vested in the Crown-in-Parliament. However, the Crown acts on the advice of the Prime Minister and the powers of the House of Lords are limited to only delaying legislation.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was created on 1 January 1801, by the merger of the Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland under the Acts of Union 1800. The principle of ministerial responsibility to the lower House did not develop until the 19th century—the House of Lords was superior to the House of Commons both in theory and in practice. Members of the House of Commons were elected in an antiquated electoral system, under which constituencies of vastly different sizes existed. Thus, the borough of Old Sarum, with seven voters, could elect two members, as could the borough of Dunwich, which had completely disappeared into the sea due to land erosion. Many small constituencies, known as pocket or rotten boroughs, were controlled by members of the House of Lords, who could ensure the election of their relatives or supporters. During the reforms of the 19th century, beginning with the Reform Act 1832, the electoral system for the House of Commons was progressively regularised.

No longer dependent on the Lords for their seats, MPs grew more assertive. The supremacy of the British House of Commons was reaffirmed in the early 20th century. In 1909, the Commons passed the so-called "People's Budget," which made numerous changes to the taxation system which were detrimental to wealthy landowners; the House of Lords, which consisted of powerful landowners, rejected the Budget. On the basis of the Budget's popularity and the Lords' consequent unpopularity, the Liberal Party narrowly won two general elections in 1910. Using the result as a mandate, the Liberal Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, introduced the Parliament Bill, which sought to restrict the powers of the House of Lords; when the Lords refused to pass the bill, Asquith countered with a promise extracted from the King in secret before the second general election of 1910 and requested the creation of several hundred Liberal peers, so as to erase the Conservative majority in the House of Lords. In the face of such a threat, the House of Lords narrowly passed the bill.

The Parliament Act 1911, as it became, prevented the Lords from blocking a money bill, allowed them to delay any other bill for a maximum of three sessions, after which it could become law over their objections. However, regar

François-Benoît Hoffman was a French playwright and critic, best known today for his operatic librettos, including those set to music by Étienne Méhul and Luigi Cherubini. Hoffman was born in Nancy, studied law at the University of Strasbourg. However, his stammer hindered his legal career, he entered military service in Corsica, he served there for only a short time, returning to Nancy, wrote some poems which brought him into notice at the little court of Lunéville over which the Marquise de Boufflers presided. In 1784 he went to Paris where he wrote his first opera libretto, Phèdre, for the composer Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, it was performed at Fontainebleau in October 1786. After quarrelling with Lemoyne, Hoffman offered his libretto Adrien, empereur de Rome to Cherubini, who turned it down in favour of another Hoffman drama, Médée. Adrien was accepted instead by Méhul, with whom Hoffman collaborated on several operas, including Euphrosine and Ariodant. Hoffman was a strong advocate of authors' rights regarding artistic control and freedom of speech.

This stance brought him into conflict with the authorities. A quarrel with the management of the Paris Opéra over Nephté led to them rejecting Médée in 1790. In 1792, the French Revolutionary government objected to Adrien on political grounds, Hoffman ran considerable risk by refusing to make the changes proposed to him, it was seven years before Adrien received its premiere at the Opéra. Hoffman's operas were in a lighter style than his works of the 1790s. A notable example is Les rendez-vous bourgeois, with music by Isouard. In 1807 he was invited by Charles Guillaume Étienne to contribute to the Journal de l'Empire. Hoffman's wide reading qualified him to write on all sorts of subjects, he turned with no difficulty, from reviewing books on medicine to violent attacks on the Jesuits, his severe criticism of Chateaubriand's Les Martyrs led the author to make some changes in a edition. He had the reputation of being an conscientious and incorruptible critic and thus exercised wide influence. ThéâtrePhèdre, tragédie lyrique en 3 actes, music by Lemoyne, premiere 26 October 1786 au château de Fontainebleau.

La mort d'Abel, opera with music by Rodolphe Kreutzer, premiere 1810 Romans, essaisMes souvenirs ou Recueil de pensées fugitives. Hoffman, dans: Œuvres de F. B. Hoffman précédées d’une Notice sur sa vie. Théatre. Tome 2. S. V-LV. P. Jacquinet: François Benoît Hoffman: sa vie, ses œuvres, Nancy 1878. Stratonice: introduction to the edition of Hoffman and Méhul's opera by M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet T. G. Waidelich: „…imitée d’Aristophane“. Die Lisistrata von Hoffman und Solié als Bindeglied zu den Verschwornen von Castelli und Schubert mit einem Ausblick auf die Rezeption des Sujets im Musiktheater. In: Schubert:Perspektiven. 9, 2010, p. 216–228. François-Benoît Hoffman on Data.bnf.fr

Live Improvisations is a 1992 collaborative live album of improvised music by English experimental musicians Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson. It was recorded in May 1990 in England and was released on Woof Records in the United Kingdom and Megaphone Records in the United States. Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson's first performance together was when they supplied music for a dance recital in 1968 while they were students at Cambridge University, they had never played together before and Frith said " had an alto sax, I had my violin, we just improvised this ghastly screaming noise for about half an hour." Surprised by their performance, to keep the momentum going and Hodgkinson formed a band, which went on to become the English avant-rock group Henry Cow. Writing in a review at AllMusic, Rick Anderson described the improvisations of Frith and Hodgkinson on this album as "cacophonic", but added that "none of it is ugly. Anderson rated the album as "ighly recommended". All tracks are untitled, composed by Fred Frith and Tim Hodgkinson, performed in England.

Source: Discogs, Fred Frith discography. Fred Frith – guitar, vocals Tim Hodgkinson – keyboards, alto saxophone, clarinetSource: Discogs, Fred Frith discography. All tracks recorded by Michael Gerzon. Track 1 recorded on a 4-track Tracks 2, 3 and 4 recorded on a DAT Tracks 5 and 6 recorded on a Sony ProfessionalSource: Discogs