HOUSE RULES

If the walls of Westminster Hall, the oldest part of the predominantly Victorian Houses of Parliament, could talk, their 1,000-year tale would be epic in scope and unparalleled in incident. For, more than any other single building, its stone walls, dating from 1097, have borne witness to a millennium’s worth of nation-shaping events and played host to everyone who has ever been anyone in British politics.

It is here that the fates of Guy Fawkes, William Wallace, Thomas More and Charles I were sealed, each tried and sentenced to death in this room. It is where Richard II was deposed; where King Henry VIII and later Elizabeth I’s coronation banquets were held; where George V, George VI, Winston Churchill and, most recently, the Queen Mother lay in state; and where the great and good have addressed the houses, from Nelson Mandela to Barack Obama.

Its constant evolution is underlined by two recent additions: the Diamond