Cartoon in corridor of National Liberal Club

Here is one of a collection of cartoons from the 1880s and 90s still to be found in a corridor in the National Liberal Club on the Embankment in London.

This features followers of the liberal leader and multiple PM W. E. Gladstone, who had split the Liberals in 1886 on the issue of Home Rule for Ireland (a past empire issue if ever there was one). I am afraid that my knowledge of the politics of those days is not sufficient to describe who they were in bondage to, or indeed who they are.

The NLC features many amazing survivals and some of the most astonishing dining and meeting rooms from the late Victorian era you could ever see - it is truly amazing what you can do with glazed terracotta tiles.

Having been out of Office (and the National Liberal Club being seen as a remarkable survival of a bygone era of politics), the Liberals are of course now part of Government again. I wonder whether modern cartoons of liberal leaders will find their way into their corridors for another century?