Andrew Bonar Law was famously known as the Unknown Prime Minister. He was the shortest serving Prime Minister of the 20th century with only 209 days in office from 23 October 1922 to 19 May 1923. He had to resign …
In our Archive, there are certain private collections so large given the task of writing a blog about one of these individuals its hard to know where to start… For this reason, I’ve come up with a plan to streamline …
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 …
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 …
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 biopic …
This article was written by Miriam Gibson, Archives Assistant (Graduate Trainee). Content warning: This article uses contemporary quotes which contain offensive language and details of the transatlantic slave trade, which some readers may find upsetting. “The storm is fast gathering; every instant …
By Mari Takayanagi, Senior Archivist On 22 September 1921, Margaret Wintringham (1879-1955) was elected MP for Louth in Lincolnshire in a by-election, becoming the first ever Liberal woman MP. She was the third woman MP ever elected, following Constance Markievicz in 1918 and …
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs National Portrait Gallery To mark South Asian Heritage Month, here’s a profile of Shapurji Saklatvala, a pioneering British Parliamentarian of Indian birth. Prepare to be enlightened about The Man, The Myth, The Marxist. This blog was …
Learn more about the Parliamentary Archives photograph collection and the secrets hidden in them. This blog was written by Simon Barnes and Tim Banting, Heritage Photographers in the Parliamentary Archives The UK Parliament recently shared a photograph from our collections, …
Emanuel Shinwell: Politician, Peer, Pugilist In the first of our series on the history of Jewish MPs we chronicle the ‘nine lives’ of Manny Shinwell. This blog was written by Richard Ward, Assistant Archives Officer. You know you’ve made it …
