In our second episode with the Houses of Parliament, we learn how to visit the Parliamentary archives, the conditions of the ladies' gallery and the story of the "grille incident."

suffragette card

suffragette card

We're sending ten blu-ray DVDs of the movie Suffragette (starring Carey Mulligan and Meryl Streep, partly filmed on location at the Houses of Parliament) to the first ten people who either submit a photo or just leave us a comment about these podcasts at [email protected]. (Add "Podcast" in your subject line!)

Go to the Houses of Parliament website for more information about visiting, the Suffragette Season tours and a virtual tour of Victoria Tower. You can also take a virtual tour of Houses of Parliament below:


Melanie Unwin is the Deputy Curator of Works of Art for the Parliamentary Art Collection. She has worked at Parliament for 11 years. She was previously at the National Sound Archive at the British Library, where she collected and curated oral history recordings with artists, designers, and architects. Prior to that time, she was an academic, teaching art and design history.

Dr. Mari Takayanagi is a senior archivist at the Parliamentary Archives and an historian with a particular interest in women and Parliament in the early 20th century. Her doctoral thesis, "Parliament and Women c.1900-1945," considered how legislation affected women's lives, gender equality, women's roles on Parliamentary committees, and the history of women staff in Parliament. She is a registered archivist and has worked at Parliament for over 14 years. She was previously an archivist at the London School of Economics.