Betty Boothroyd Autobiography: The Autobiography

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John Stonehouse was a Labour MP between the years of 1957-1976, representing first the constituency of Wednesbury and later Walsall North.

Hawes has previously acted opposite real-life husband Matthew Macfadyen in BBC One's spy thriller Spooks. A defensive account of her speakership, overly padded with unrelieved slabs of Hansard and newspaper cuttings, adds little to our knowledge of its controversies.While in an interview in 2021, she said PMQs had "deteriorated a great deal in the last few years", adding: "It's not the quality that it used to be.

She had been a singer and dancer “hoofing it” with a teenage jazz band, the Swing Stars, entertaining servicemen under the auspices of Ensa, when she successfully auditioned for the Tiller Girls in London. Boothroyd was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Civil Law (Hon DCL) by the City University London in 1993. She subsequently worked in Washington, DC as a legislative assistant to American Congressman Silvio Conte, between 1960 and 1962. It was a privilege to be in parliament during her tenure and to know her as the big-hearted and kind person she was.

In 1975, she became a Government-appointed member of the then European Common Assembly (ECSC) until she was discharged in 1977. When she was ill at home for a fortnight, her father used his lunch hour to walk to her school every day to collect her homework. Despite her decision not to wear a wig, "far too heavy and imperious", she was a stout defender of Parliamentary tradition, something which led to some friction with the incoming Blair government in 1997. When members spoke for too long she had a habit of clumsily stifling a yawn as a signal of her displeasure and at the end of prime minister’s questions she inadvertently introduced what would become her catchphrase by declaring after one of her first sessions in the chair: “Time’s up!

She also welcomed numerous political figures to Parliament, including former French president Jacques Chirac. The Conservative MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, Simon Clarke, described Boothroyd as a “magnificent parliamentarian”, and said it was “a thrill to see her around the Commons until recently”.She was then made a member of the ‘Labour Party’s ‘National Executive Committee’ and the ‘House of Commons Commission. The source code for the WIKI 2 extension is being checked by specialists of the Mozilla Foundation, Google, and Apple.

I’ve only seen her once in Westminster and was too awestruck to even introduce myself, and now I’ll never have that opportunity. She campaigned successfully and with great gusto for a memorial to be erected in Whitehall to commemorate the role of the women of Britain in the second world war. To be the first woman Speaker was truly ground-breaking and Betty certainly broke that glass ceiling with panache. Boothroyd was born in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, in 1929, the only child of Ben Archibald Boothroyd (1886–1948) and his second wife Mary ( née Butterfield, 1901–1982), both textile workers.

She stuck by the rules, had a no-nonsense style, but any reprimands she did issue were done with good humour and charm.