Charles Masterman in a British Pathe film

Clicking on the picture above will take you to the British Pathe site and a film clip from 1913 entitled "Cabinet Returns".

Note first the Suffragette outside the gates of Parliament - you can see her in the photo above too. Then Mr Asquith arrives at the House by taxi - note that he pays for it out of his own pocket.

Then the scene changes and we see Lloyd George, Sir Rufus Isaacs and this blog's old friend Charles Masterman. Masterman is the younger man in the dark overcoat and stands on the right of the group of three.

Something does not quite add up here. The clip comes from 1913, yet Masterman was not asked to join the cabinet until February the following year.

As we saw a couple of weeks ago, this promotion obliged Masterman to resign his seat and fight a by-election. He was unable to win it and later lost a second by-election in Ipswich.