1.
Royal Victorian Order
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The Royal Victorian Order is a dynastic order of knighthood established in 1896 by Queen Victoria. It recognises distinguished personal service to the monarch of the Commonwealth realms, members of the monarchs family, the present monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, is the Sovereign of the order, its motto is Victoria, and its official day is 20 June. The orders chapel is the Savoy Chapel in London, the organisation was founded a year preceding Victorias Diamond Jubilee, so as to give the Queen time to complete a list of first inductees. The orders official day was made 20 June of each year, in 1902, King Edward VII created the Royal Victorian Chain as a personal decoration for royal personages and a few eminent British subjects and it was the highest class of the Royal Victorian Order. It is today distinct from the order, though it is issued by the chancery of the Royal Victorian Order. The order was open to foreigners from its inception, the Prefect of Alpes-Maritimes, Queen Elizabeth II then appointed her daughter, Anne, Princess Royal, to the position in 2007. Foreigners may be admitted as members, there are no limits to the number of any grade. Retiring Deans of the Royal Peculiars of St, prior to 1984, the grades of Lieutenant and Member were classified as Members and Members, respectively, but both with the post-nominals MVO. On 31 December of that year, Queen Elizabeth II declared that those in the grade of Member would henceforth be Lieutenants with the post-nominals LVO. Upon admission into the Royal Victorian Order, members are given various insignia of the organisation, each grade being represented by different emblems and robes. For Knights and Dames Grand Cross, Commanders, and Lieutenants, the orders ribbon is blue with red-white-red stripe edging, the only difference being that for foreigners appointed into the society, their ribbon bearing an additional central white stripe. For Knights Grand Cross, the ribbon is 82.5 millimetres wide, for Dames Grand Cross 57.1 millimetres, for Knights and Dames Commander 44.4 millimetres, and for all other members 31.7 millimetres. Though after the death of a Knight or Dame Grand Cross their insignia may be retained by their family, the collar must be returned. Knights and Dames Grand Cross also wear a mantle of blue satin edged with red satin and lined with white satin. Since 1938, the chapel of the Royal Victorian Order has been the Queens Chapel of the Savoy, in central London, upon the occupants death, the plate is retained, leaving the stalls festooned with a record of the orders Knights and Dames Grand Cross since 1938. There is insufficient space in the chapel for the display of knights and dames banners, founded by Michael Jackson, the group has, since 2008, gathered biennially. The practice of notifying the Prime Minister of Canada of nominees ended in 1982, in Canada, the order has come to be colloquially dubbed as the Royal Visit Order, as the majority of appointments are made by the sovereign during her tours of the country. Persons have been removed from the order at the monarchs command, anthony Blunt, a former surveyor of the Queens Pictures, was in 1979 stripped of his knighthood, after it was revealed that he had been a spy
2.
Leader of the House of Lords
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The Leader of the House of Lords is a member of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom who is responsible for arranging government business in the House of Lords. The role is held in combination with a formal Cabinet position, usually one of the sinecure offices of Lord President of the Council. Unless the Leader is also a minister, being Leader constitutes the bulk of his or her government responsibilities. The Office of the Leader of the House of Lords is a ministerial department, though the Leader of the House is a member of the cabinet and remains a partisan figure, he or she also has responsibilities to the House as a whole. In contrast to the House of Commons, where proceedings are controlled by the Speaker, proceedings in the Lords are controlled by peers themselves, under the rules set out in the Standing Orders. The Leader is often called upon to advise on procedures and points of order, however, like the Lord Speaker, the Leader of the House has no power to rule on points of order or to intervene during an inappropriate speech. Those functions were transferred to the Lord Speaker, however, it may have been used as early as 1689, applied to George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax, when he was Speaker of the House of Lords during the Convention Parliament of that year. The role developed during the first quarter of the century, at the same time as the role of Prime Minister. It was therefore necessary for a member of the government to take responsibility for steering government legislation through each House, the Earl of Sunderland, initiated aspects of the role during the Whig Junta under Queen Anne. Sunderland and the other Whigs were dismissed from office in reaction to their co-ordination of government matters, Sunderland returned to power under George I, as Lord Privy Seal. When the Prime Minister sat in the House of Lords, which was common until the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Prime Minister sat in the Commons, the position of Leader of the Lords was often held by the Foreign Secretary or Colonial Secretary. In some coalition governments, it was held by the party leader who was not Prime Minister, since the end of the Marquess of Salisburys last government, in 1902, the position clearly exists in its own right as a member of the cabinet. The first female Leader of the Lords was Janet Young, Baroness Young in 1981–1983, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury served as Leader of the House of Lords from 1885 to 1886, from 1886 to 1892 and from 1895 to 1902. His son James Gascoyne-Cecil, 4th Marquess of Salisbury served as Leader from 1925 to 1929 and his grandson, Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 7th Marquess of Salisbury, served as Leader from 1994 to 1997, as Viscount Cranborne, again by means of a writ of acceleration. Douglas Hogg, 1st Viscount Hailsham served as Leader of the House of Lords from 1931 to 1935 and his son Quintin Hogg, 2nd Viscount Hailsham served as Leader from 1960 to 1963. Because the post is a one and not a ministerial office in its own right, it is not always included in official lists of government offices. This can make it difficult to determine who the Leader of the House of Lords was in a particular ministry, House of Lords Leader of the House of Commons Leader of the House of Lords Official site
3.
John Major
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Sir John Major, KG, CH, PC is a British politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997. A cabinet minister from 1987, he served Margaret Thatcher in the Treasury, Major was Member of Parliament for Huntingdon from 1979 to 2001. He is currently the oldest living former Prime Minister, following the death of Thatcher on 8 April 2013, at the beginning of his premiership, Major presided over British participation in the Gulf War in March 1991 and negotiated the Maastricht Treaty in December 1991. Shortly after this, even though a supporter of the ERM. This event led to a loss of confidence in Conservative economic policies, Major went on to lose the 1997 general election months later, in one of the largest electoral defeats since the Great Reform Act of 1832. After defeat, Major resigned as Prime Minister and was succeeded as Leader of the Conservative Party by William Hague and he went on to retire from active politics, leaving the House of Commons at the 2001 general election. Major was born in 1943 at St Helier Hospital in Sutton, Surrey and he was christened John Roy Major but only John was recorded on his birth certificate. He used his name until the early 1980s. He attended primary school at Cheam Common and from 1954 he attended Rutlish School, in 1955, with his fathers garden ornaments business in decline, the family moved to Brixton. He also credited a chance meeting with former Prime Minister Clement Attlee on the Kings Road shortly afterwards, Major left school at the age of 16 in 1959 with three O-levels in History, English Language and English Literature. He later gained three more O-levels by correspondence course, in the British Constitution, Mathematics and Economics, Majors first job was as a clerk in the insurance brokerage firm Pratt & Sons in 1959. Major joined the Young Conservatives in Brixton at this time, Major was almost 19 years old when his father died at the age of 82 on 27 March 1962. His mother died eight and a years later in September 1970 at the age of 65. After Major became Prime Minister it was misreported that his failure to get a job as a bus conductor resulted from his failing to pass a maths test and he had in fact passed all of the necessary tests but had been passed over owing to his height. After a period of unemployment, Major started working at the London Electricity Board in 1963 which is incidentally his successor as Prime Minister, Tony Blair. He later decided to undertake a course in banking. Major took up a post as an executive at the Standard Chartered Bank in May 1965 and he was sent to work in Jos, Nigeria, by the bank in 1967 and he nearly died in a car accident there. Major was interested in politics from an early age, encouraged by fellow Conservative Derek Stone, he started giving speeches on a soap-box in Brixton Market
4.
Leader of the Opposition (United Kingdom)
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The Leader of Her Majestys Most Loyal Opposition is the politician who leads the official opposition in the United Kingdom. The current Leader of the Opposition is Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, the Leader of the Opposition is normally viewed as an alternative prime minister, and is appointed to the Privy Council. They lead an Official Opposition Shadow Cabinet which scrutinises the actions of the Cabinet led by the prime minister, There is also a Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords. In the nineteenth century party affiliations were generally fixed and leaders in the two Houses were often of equal status. A single, clear Leader of the Opposition was only definitively settled if the leader in Commons or Lords was the outgoing prime minister. However, since the Parliament Act 1911 there has been no dispute that the leader in the House of Commons is pre-eminent, the Leader of the Opposition is entitled to a salary in addition to their salary as a Member of Parliament. In 2010, this additional entitlement was available up to £73,617, the first modern Leader of the Opposition was Charles James Fox, who led the Whigs as such for a generation, except during the Fox–North Coalition in 1783. He finally rejoined the government in 1806, and died later that year, for there to be a recognised Leader of the Opposition, it is necessary for there to be a sufficiently cohesive opposition to need a formal leader. The emergence of the office coincided with the period when wholly united parties became the norm. This situation was normalised in the Parliament of 1807–1812, when the members of the Grenvillite and Foxite Whig factions resolved to maintain a joint, dual-house leadership for the whole party. The Ministry of all the Talents, in which both Whig factions participated fell at the 1807 general election, during which the Whigs had re-adopted traditional factions, the prime minister of the Talents ministry, Lord Grenville had led his eponymous faction from the House of Lords. Meanwhile, the government leader of the House of Commons, Viscount Howick, led his faction, howicks father, the 1st Earl Grey died on 14 November 1807. As such the new Earl Grey vacated his seat in the House of Commons and this left no obvious Whig leader in the House of Commons. Grenvilles article in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography confirms that he was considered the Whig leader in the House of Lords between 1807 and 1817, despite Grey leading the larger faction. Grenville and Grey, political historian Archibald Foord describes as being duumvirs of the party from 1807 to 1817, Grenville was at first reluctant to name a Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons, commenting. All the elections in the world would not have made Windham or Sheridan leaders of the old Opposition while Fox was alive, eventually they jointly recommended George Ponsonby to the Whig MPs, whom they accepted as the first Leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons. Ponsonby proved a leader but as he could not be persuaded to resign. Lord Grenville retired from politics in 1817, leaving Grey as the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords
5.
House of Lords
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The House of Lords of the United Kingdom, referred to ceremonially as the House of Peers, is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster, officially, the full name of the house is, The Right Honourable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled. Unlike the elected House of Commons, all members of the House of Lords are appointed, the membership of the House of Lords is drawn from the peerage and is made up of Lords Spiritual and Lords Temporal. The Lords Spiritual are 26 bishops in the established Church of England, of the Lords Temporal, the majority are life peers who are appointed by the monarch on the advice of the Prime Minister, or on the advice of the House of Lords Appointments Commission. However, they include some hereditary peers including four dukes. Very few of these are female since most hereditary peerages can only be inherited by men, while the House of Commons has a defined 650-seat membership, the number of members in the House of Lords is not fixed. There are currently 805 sitting Lords, the House of Lords is the only upper house of any bicameral parliament to be larger than its respective lower house. The House of Lords scrutinises bills that have approved by the House of Commons. It regularly reviews and amends Bills from the Commons, while it is unable to prevent Bills passing into law, except in certain limited circumstances, it can delay Bills and force the Commons to reconsider their decisions. In this capacity, the House of Lords acts as a check on the House of Commons that is independent from the electoral process, Bills can be introduced into either the House of Lords or the House of Commons. Members of the Lords may also take on roles as government ministers, the House of Lords has its own support services, separate from the Commons, including the House of Lords Library. The Queens Speech is delivered in the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament, the House also has a Church of England role, in that Church Measures must be tabled within the House by the Lords Spiritual. This new parliament was, in effect, the continuation of the Parliament of England with the addition of 45 MPs and 16 Peers to represent Scotland, the Parliament of England developed from the Magnum Concilium, the Great Council that advised the King during medieval times. This royal council came to be composed of ecclesiastics, noblemen, the first English Parliament is often considered to be the Model Parliament, which included archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, and representatives of the shires and boroughs of it. The power of Parliament grew slowly, fluctuating as the strength of the monarchy grew or declined, for example, during much of the reign of Edward II, the nobility was supreme, the Crown weak, and the shire and borough representatives entirely powerless. In 1569, the authority of Parliament was for the first time recognised not simply by custom or royal charter, further developments occurred during the reign of Edward IIs successor, Edward III. It was during this Kings reign that Parliament clearly separated into two chambers, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The authority of Parliament continued to grow, and, during the fifteenth century
6.
William Hague
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William Jefferson Hague, Baron Hague of Richmond PC FRSL is a British Conservative politician and life peer. He represented Richmond, Yorkshire as Member of Parliament from 1989 to 2015, Hague was educated at Wath-upon-Dearne Grammar School, the University of Oxford and INSEAD, subsequently being returned to the House of Commons at a by-election in 1989. Hague quickly rose through the ranks of the government of John Major and was appointed to Cabinet in 1995 as Secretary of State for Wales. Following the Conservatives landslide defeat at the 1997 general election by the Labour Party and he returned to the backbenches, pursuing a career as an author, writing biographies of William Pitt the Younger and William Wilberforce. He also held several directorships, and worked as a consultant, after David Cameron was elected Leader of the Conservative Party in 2005, Hague was reappointed to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Foreign Secretary. He also assumed the role of Senior Member of the Shadow Cabinet, after the formation of the Coalition Government in 2010, Hague was appointed First Secretary of State and Foreign Secretary. Cameron described him as his de facto political deputy, Hague was elevated as a Life Peer in the 2015 Dissolution Honours List and created Baron Hague of Richmond, of Richmond in the County of North Yorkshire, on 9 October. Hague was born on 26 March 1961 in Rotherham, Yorkshire and he initially boarded at Ripon Grammar School and then attended Wath-upon-Dearne Comprehensive, a State-secondary school near Rotherham, previously Wath Grammar School. His parents, Nigel and Stella Hague, ran a soft drinks manufacturing business where he worked during school holidays and his childhood nurse, Bessie Camm, went on to be the oldest living person in Britain as of 2017, at age 112. He first made the news at the age of 16 by addressing the Conservatives at their 1977 Annual National Conference. In his speech he told the delegates, half of you wont be here in 30 or 40 years time, but that others would have to live with consequences of a Labour Government if it stayed in power. Hague read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Magdalen College, Oxford and he was President of the Oxford University Conservative Association, but was convicted of electoral malpractice in the election process. Hague was playing the game of using his powers as President to keep his faction in power. There were accusations of blatant ballot box stuffing and he also served as President of the Oxford Union, an established route into politics. After Oxford, Hague went on to study for a Master of Business Administration degree at INSEAD and he then worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where Archie Norman was his mentor. After Lamont was sacked in 1993, Hague moved to the Department of Social Security where he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, the following year he was promoted as Minister of State in the DSS with responsibility for Social Security and Disabled People. His fast rise up through Government was attributed to his intelligence and he continued serving in Cabinet until the Conservatives were replaced by New Labour at the 1997 general election. At the age of 36, Hague was tasked with rebuilding the Conservative Party by attempting to build a modern image
7.
South Dorset (UK Parliament constituency)
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South Dorset is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2010 by Richard Drax, a Conservative. The constituency was created as a consequence of the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885, the constituency was created as a consequence of the Redistribution of Seats Act 1885. The Act reduced the number of MPs. in Dorset from 10 to 4 and it was initially proposed to name the new constituencies after existing boroughs but, following an amendment in the Commons on 14 April 1885, the names were changed to the points of the compass. The South Dorset constituency was divided into 7 polling districts, Dorchester was chosen as the place where the nomination of candidates would take place and the result would be declared. The 2001 election saw the second Labour win in South Dorsets history with Labours smallest majority in England, in the 2005 election this constituency was one of the few in which Labour significantly increased their majority. Conservative candidate Ed Matts was found to have doctored an image which was part of his campaign material, Matts changed a photo of a protest against the deportation of a South Dorset resident, so that it appeared to be a protest against uncontrolled immigration. In both elections, the left-wing singer-songwriter Billy Bragg led an anti-Conservative tactical voting campaign in Dorset constituencies, Richard Drax retained the seat in 2015 election with an increased majority. 1885–1918, The Municipal Boroughs of Dorchester, and Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, the seat includes the coastal areas to the south of the county of Dorset, plus some rural Purbeck territory further inland. The port of Weymouth is one of the few towns in Dorset and its suburbs extend onto the Wyke Regis peninsula. The constituency includes Bovington army camp, and further east, Corfe Castle and this part of the seat is closer to Poole and Bournemouth than to Weymouth. Workless claimants were in November 2012 significantly lower than the average of 3. 8%. General Election 1939/40, Another general election was required to place before the end of 1940
8.
Conservative Party (UK)
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The Conservative Party, officially the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a political party in the United Kingdom. It is currently the party, having won a majority of seats in the House of Commons at the 2015 general election. The partys leader, Theresa May, is serving as Prime Minister. It is the largest party in government with 8,702 councillors. The Conservative Party is one of the two major political parties in the United Kingdom, the other being its modern rival. The Conservative Partys platform involves support for market capitalism, free enterprise, fiscal conservatism, a strong national defence, deregulation. In the 1920s, the Liberal vote greatly diminished and the Labour Party became the Conservatives main rivals, Conservative Prime Ministers led governments for 57 years of the twentieth century, including Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. Thatchers tenure led to wide-ranging economic liberalisation, the Conservative Partys domination of British politics throughout the twentieth century has led to them being referred to as one of the most successful political parties in the Western world. The Conservatives are the joint-second largest British party in the European Parliament, with twenty MEPs, the party is a member of the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe Europarty and the International Democrat Union. The party is the second-largest in the Scottish Parliament and the second-largest in the Welsh Assembly, the party is also organised in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar. The Conservative Party traces its origins to a faction, rooted in the 18th century Whig Party and they were known as Independent Whigs, Friends of Mr Pitt, or Pittites. After Pitts death the term Tory came into use and this was an allusion to the Tories, a political grouping that had existed from 1678, but which had no organisational continuity with the Pittite party. From about 1812 on the name Tory was commonly used for the newer party, the term Conservative was suggested as a title for the party by a magazine article by J. Wilson Croker in the Quarterly Review in 1830. The name immediately caught on and was adopted under the aegis of Sir Robert Peel around 1834. Peel is acknowledged as the founder of the Conservative Party, which he created with the announcement of the Tamworth Manifesto, the term Conservative Party rather than Tory was the dominant usage by 1845. In 1912, the Liberal Unionists merged with the Conservative Party, in Ireland, the Irish Unionist Alliance had been formed in 1891 which merged anti-Home Rule Unionists into one political movement. Its MPs took the Conservative whip at Westminster, and in essence formed the Irish wing of the party until 1922. The Conservatives served with the Liberals in an all-party coalition government during World War I, keohane finds that the Conservatives were bitterly divided before 1914, especially on the issue of Irish Unionism and the experience of three consecutive election losses
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Christ Church, Oxford
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Christ Church is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. The college is associated with Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, which serves as the college chapel and it is the second wealthiest Oxford college by financial endowment with an endowment of £436m as of 2015. Christ Church has produced thirteen British prime ministers, more than any other Oxbridge college, the college was the setting for parts of Evelyn Waughs Brideshead Revisited, as well as a small part of Lewis Carrolls Alices Adventures in Wonderland. More recently it has used in the filming of the movies of J. K. Rowlings Harry Potter series. Distinctive features of the architecture have been used as models by a number of other academic institutions, including the National University of Ireland, Galway. The University of Chicago and Cornell University both have reproductions of Christ Churchs dining hall, christChurch Cathedral in New Zealand, after which the City of Christchurch is named, is itself named after Christ Church, Oxford. Stained glass windows in the cathedral and other buildings are by the Pre-Raphaelite William Morris group with designs by Edward Burne-Jones, Christ Church is also partly responsible for the creation of University College Reading, which later gained its own Royal Charter and became the University of Reading. The first female undergraduates matriculated at Christ Church in 1980 and he planned the establishment on a magnificent scale, but fell from grace in 1529, with the buildings only three-quarters complete, as they were to remain for 140 years. In 1531 the college was suppressed, but it was refounded in 1532 as King Henry VIIIs College by Henry VIII. Since the time of Queen Elizabeth I the college has also associated with Westminster School. The dean remains to this day an ex member of the schools governing body. Major additions have made to the buildings through the centuries. To this day the bell in the tower, Great Tom, is rung 101 times at 9 pm at the former Oxford time every night, in former times this was done at midnight, signalling the close of all college gates throughout Oxford. Since it took 20 minutes to ring the 101, Christ Church gates, unlike those of other colleges, when the ringing was moved back to 9,00 pm, Christ Church gates still remained open until 12.20,20 minutes later than any other college. Although the clock itself now shows GMT/BST, Christ Church still follows Oxford time in the timings of services in the cathedral, King Charles I made the Deanery his palace and held his Parliament in the Great Hall during the English Civil War. In the evening of 29 May 1645, during the siege of Oxford. During the Commonwealth, John Owen attained considerable eminence, the Visitor of Christ Church is the reigning British sovereign, and the Bishop of Oxford is unique among English bishops in not being the Visitor of his own cathedral. The head of the college is the Dean of Christ Church, There are a senior and a junior censor the former of whom is responsible for academic matters, the latter for undergraduate discipline
10.
Hatfield House
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Hatfield House is a country house set in a large park, the Great Park, on the eastern side of the town of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England. It is an example of Jacobean architecture. The estate includes extensive grounds and surviving parts of an earlier palace, the house, currently the home of Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 7th Marquess of Salisbury, is open to the public. An earlier building on the site was the Royal Palace of Hatfield, only part of this still exists, a short distance from the present house. That palace was the home and favourite residence of Queen Elizabeth I. Built in 1497 by the Bishop of Ely, King Henry VIIs minister John Cardinal Morton, the palace was seized by Henry VIII with other church properties. The nearby parish church of St Etheldredas, in Old Hatfield once served the Bishops Palace as well as the village, Henry VIIIs children, King Edward VI and the future Queen Elizabeth I, spent their youth at Hatfield Palace. She successfully defended her conduct with wit and defiance, seymour was executed in 1549 for numerous other crimes against the crown. After her two months of imprisonment in the Tower of London by her sister Queen Mary, Elizabeth returned to Hatfield. The Queen Elizabeth Oak on the grounds of the estate is said to be the location where Elizabeth was told she was Queen following Marys death, in November 1558, Elizabeth held her first Council of State in the Great Hall. The library displays a 22 feet long illuminated parchment roll showing the pedigree of the Queen with ancestors back to Adam, the Marble Hall holds the Rainbow Portrait of Elizabeth. Cecil liked to build and so tore down three wings of the palace in 1608 and used the bricks to build the present structure. The richly carved wooden Grand Staircase and the stained glass window in the private chapel are among the houses original Jacobean features. Cecils descendant, Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, was three times prime minister during the years of Queen Victorias reign. The city of Salisbury in the colony of Rhodesia was founded in his time and he is also known for often putting members of his family into the Government while Prime Minister. CRUs were created to help repatriated British prisoners of war to back to civilian life. On 12 July 1945, the King and Queen visited the CRU at Hatfield, the Gardens, covering 42 acres, date from the early 17th century, and were laid out by John Tradescant the elder. Tradescant visited Europe and brought back trees and plants that had never previously been grown in England, the gardens included orchards, fountains, scented plants, water parterres, terraces, herb gardens and a foot maze
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