House of Commons Playing Cards
House of Commons playing cards designed to serve as a civic guide to the UK Parliament.
Produced by the House of Commons Information Office this pack of 52 cards and 4 jokers was meant to serve as a civic guide to the UK Parliament and was sometimes distributed to visiting groups. Each card has 4 corner indices and in the centre is a piece of information. The spade suit covers Legislation; clubs cover MPs and elections; hearts give information about History; and diamonds the House of Commons. The pack was produced 2007, at a time when there 646 Members of Parliament (see jack of clubs) and when the salary of a Member was £61,820 (see 3 of clubs).
Interestingly, the information on the six and seven of diamonds dates to the time when playing cards are first recorded in European history.
Above: House of Commons playing cards produced by the House of Commons Information Office, 2007.
By Peter Burnett
Member since July 27, 2022
I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.
Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.
Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.
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