Prime numbers
It looks as if Britain will just miss out on having seven prime ministers in the space of a decade as nominations for the Labour leadership election will not open until 9 July (David Cameron left office on 13 July 2016). Have we ever had seven PMs in the space of ten years?
– After Lord Liverpool left office on 9 April 1827 Britain saw a further eight premierships within the following decade. Two, however, saw the same person returning to office, so we had seven different prime ministers within the space of ten years. They were:
Lord Liverpool 1812-27
George Canning 1827
Lord Goderich 1827-28
Duke of Wellington 1828-30, 1834
Earl Grey 1830-34
Lord Melbourne 1834, 1835-41
Robert Peel 1834-35
Education, education
If Andy Burnham, who studied English at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, becomes prime minister he will break a remarkable run of prime ministers who went to Oxford University. Since 1945, 14 out of 18 went to Oxford, the exceptions being Gordon Brown (Edinburgh) and Winston Churchill, James Callaghan and John Major, who didn’t go to university at all.
– The last Cambridge-educated PM was Stanley Baldwin, who left office in 1937.
– In all, Cambridge has produced 14 prime ministers against Oxford’s 31. Edinburgh and Glasgow have each produced 3, while 8 did not attend any university.
Hot or not
The 50th anniversary of the heatwave of 1976 has coincided with another heatwave. Does the 1976 event still hold any records?
– Even at the time, the summer of 1976 did not break the record for the highest temperature ever recorded in Britain. The highest recorded that year was 35.96°C in Cheltenham on 3 July, while the record at the time was 36.7°C, recorded in several places on 9 August 1911. The current record is 40.3°C recorded at Coningsby, Lincolnshire on 19 July 2022.
– However, what the 1976 heatwave lacked in intensity it made up for in duration. For 15 consecutive days the temperature exceeded 32.2°C somewhere in Britain. Temperatures in excess of 35°C were recorded for five days running. This has never been surpassed.
– In the Central England Temperature record, going back to 1659, the summer of 1976 still comes top, along with 2025, with an average temperature of 17.72°C for the months June, July and August.
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