History
The constituency is a safe Conservative seat, and has only ever been represented by Conservative MPs. However, the Conservatives came close to losing the seat in a 1983 by-election when the former cabinet minister William Whitelaw became the leader of the House of Lords: the by-election took place a mere seven weeks after the 1983 general election.
Read more about this topic: Penrith And The Border (UK Parliament Constituency)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)