Buildings and Architecture
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The House of Commons Chamber and the Politics of Seating
Parliament will be officially opened this week and debates will begin once again in the House of Commons. But with…
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Two Gardening Giants- Joseph Chamberlain and Michael Heseltine
In the second of two blogs for National Gardening Week, here guest blogger Dr Jonathan Denby takes a closer look…
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Great Parliamentary Gardeners- The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Compared
The beginning of May marks the Royal Horticultural Society’s National Gardening Week, but many of the Parliamentarians in our volumes…
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Dutch Diet Diversity: Comparing Seventeenth-Century Dutch Provincial Assemblies (Diets) in East Asia, North America, and the Dutch Republic
Ahead of next Tuesday’s online Parliaments, Politics and People seminar, we hear from Dr Jim van der Meulen of Ghent University.…
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The smallest room in the House
Women have been accessing the Palace of Westminster for centuries, yet sanitary facilities have not always been provided. Chloe Challender,…
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Bishop Jewel and the lost archdeaconry
Many Elizabethan bills which failed to become Acts of Parliament don’t now survive, and little is known about them except…
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“Take care, or you will break my shins with this damned axe”: The trials of Lords Balmerino, Cromartie and Kilmarnock (Summer 1746)
The summer is normally a period for Parliament to go into recess, and for MPs and members of the Lords…
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The tomb of William Rudhale (d.1530), Queen Katherine’s attorney-general, in the church of Ross-on-Wye
William Rudhale had a successful career in the medieval legal profession culminating in his promotion to serjeants-at-law. Simon Payling from our Commons…
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Contested Space: Politics and the Commons Chamber
The Palace of Westminster was the location of some of the most dramatic events in the English Civil Wars. Dr…
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The 1626 coronation: Charles I’s botched political relaunch
After a shaky start to his reign, the king intended his coronation to bolster his personal image and agenda ahead…
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‘The buzz, the prattle, the crowds, the noise, the hurry’: the Coronation of George III and Queen Charlotte
Royal celebrations in the Georgian period were renowned for their mixture of stately formality and farcical mix-ups. In the third…
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MPs and the coronation of Edward VII
The members of the House of Lords have traditionally been far more involved with coronations than their Commons counterparts, and…