The House of Commons Speaker is a significant role within parliament that began in the 14th century and carries on to modern day. Katherine Emery, Assistant Archives Officer, will examine how the responsibilities of the Speaker have changed over time. …
Let’s go back to the summer of 1843 when the Palace of Westminster staged a Prize Cartoon Competition. The brainchild of the Fine Arts Commission that everyone was talking about. Using original prints from our collections Richard Ward, Assistant Archives …
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs National Portrait Gallery Twenty years ago, this summer, the great and good of Britain’s cartooning community gathered in Westminster Hall for the grand opening of a new Parliament exhibition titled Low: The 20th Century’s Greatest Cartoonist. …
When Edward Shackleton was ten years old, his father, the explorer Ernest Shackleton, died while on a voyage in the South Atlantic. Edward Shackleton was inspired by his father to become an adventurer himself, and led expeditions to Malaysia and …
On Friday 2 April 1982, Argentinian forces landed on the Falkland Islands, a British territory, and occupied the islands. This crisis led to an emergency Saturday sitting called for both the House of Commons and House of Lords the following …
This year marks the 150th anniversary of the inaugural FA Cup competition, first won by the now extinct Wanderers FC. It may come as a surprise that amongst our varied collections there can be found a record or two relating …
Eighty years have passed since the soothing sound of By the Sleeping Lagoon was first heard across our airwaves as the theme tune to the debut episode of BBC Radio Four’s Desert Island Discs. A multitude of MPs and Peers …
On 18 November 1910 over 300 suffragettes marched to Parliament Square led by Emmeline Pankhurst, one of the founders of the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). This protest march was in response to Prime Minister Asquith not allowing the …
Does the name Spencer Perceval ring a bell? Perhaps you remember it from Horrible Histories or an episode of Eggheads. Perceval was shot dead in the House of Commons lobby, the only British Prime Minister to have been assassinated. This …
The writer F Scott Fitzgerald memorably once said that ‘There are no second acts in American life’. Thankfully Christopher Chataway was British and didn’t adhere one iota to that maxim. Mirroring the standard structure of a theatrical play his …
