The new year calls for a new blog series, so throughout 2022 we’re taking a closer look at some of the figures who held the post of Speaker of the House of Commons. Today we hear from Dr Kathryn Rix, assistant editor of our Commons 1832-1868 project, who explores the career of J E Denison, Speaker from 1857-72.
On 8 April 1857 John Evelyn Denison was in the library at his Nottinghamshire residence, Ossington Hall, when he received a letter from the prime minister.
My dear Denison,
We wish to be allowed to propose you for the Speakership of the House of Commons. Will you agree?
Yours sincerely,
Palmerston
Lord Palmerston to J. E. Denison, 7 Apr. 1857
This brief epistle marked the beginning of Denison’s fifteen-year tenure of the Speaker’s chair: just over three weeks later, on 30 April, the Commons chose him as Speaker, with no…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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