Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Taking photographs in the Palace of Westminster

Liz Kendall, the new Labour MP for Leicester West, has been reported to the Westminster authorities for taking a photograph during the Queen's Speech and posting it on Twitter, though it is not clear if any action will be taken against her.

What Kendall did not know is that there is a ban on taking photographs in the Commons and Lords. (I know television pictures of them are beamed around the world, but I don't make the rules.)

But she cannot be the first person to have broken this ban, as I have a clear memory of having seen an illicit photograph of Neville Chamberlain and the government front bench taken by a Labour MP during the Norway debate in 1940.

It was included in a book that I reviewed for Liberator, but I cannot find that review or remember what the book was. Can any reader help me?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The book Eminent Churchillians by Andrew Roberts contains three photos taken inside the Chamber on 7th May 1940 "surreptitiously by Tory MP John Moore-Brabazon with a hidden Minox camera"

Jonathan Calder said...

Thank you, that must be it.