History of British Courts: judges not lords, please

Times Online views with alarm the arrival of the new Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. They are about 134 years behind Canada (slightly shorter times for the rest of the commonwealth)in creating a unified, judicially-based highest court of appeal. As you might have guessed, however, the Times's whole analysis of taking judicial power away from political actors goes ahead with some alarmed reference to the United States, but no awareness at all that scores of other parliamentary countries have achieved this evolution and now have decades if not centuries of experience with it.