I have just been on a group tour of the House of Lords with Mervyn Davies, the chairman of the RA Trust, whose enthusiasm for all aspects of the higher democracy is infectious.   We had tea in the dining room, attended the tail end of a debate about beavers, saw the Moses Room with paintings by J.R. Herbert RA, and ended up in the broom cupboard where Emily Davison, the suffragette, hid during the night of the 1911 Census.   It gave the best possible introduction to the pleasures and responsibilities of life as a peer (no photographs are allowed inside):-