Girl About Globe | Time to reclaim Page 3. Thanks, Brexit.

Linda Kennedy

One day, I’d like to be a Page 3 girl. Or a centrefold.

Not in a tabloid newspaper, in a travel document.

There’s a lot of conversation about British passport design at the moment. Some people are looking forward to getting the old navy blue passport back, post-Brexit.

I’d like to talk about the current design.

I just renewed my British passport, for the first time in ten years. And boy, things have changed. The new design differs substantially from the old. For a start, in keeping with the times, it’s more narcissistic. There are two images of the person being allowed to pass through ports, and they are positioned at the front of the document. (Somethings never change, though. Will they ever expand the range of permissible poses? The ‘straight-ahead-crime-suspect’ look is so over.)

The pages are now not blank, as they once were. They have representations of Britishness on them. British icons. British achievements and achievers. On all 32 pages. Overall, the passport is part travel brochure, part history lesson and the theme of the current design is ‘Creative United Kingdom.’

I start flicking. There is a man on the opening spread, posing beside an array of timepieces. He is John Harrison, clockmaker. Watches? Isn’t that a Swiss gig? I idly wonder: is Britain trying to pretend it is Switzerland, a successful country outside the EU?

I flick on. On the next page, there is another creative Brit, who is again a bloke – it’s John Constable, artist. Duly, I admire the exhibited section of The Haywain, his most famous painting.

Two Johns. Any Janes coming up? I find myself hoping a woman is on page 3, which is a most unexpected opinion. British tabloid newspapers used to feature topless women on Page 3 so this location is definitely not a feminist folio. But if the passport people have gone for the most publicised creative British woman in history, Jane Austen, at least her version of topless will be without a bonnet.

Flick. No Jane. Not bonnetless hussy. But there is the female head of Queen Victoria, on a stamp. The Penny Black was one of the earliest stamps in the UK. I am learning.

Page 4 is trains and ships. Page 5 brings red telephone boxes, and an image of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, its designer and therefore a man who created what was a really big handset.

Page 6. Finally, an actual woman who isn’t a queen. Here I find Elisabeth Scott, an architect who was responsible for British landmarks including Shakespeare Memorial theatre and Bournemouth Pier.

After that, it’s back to the boys with artists Anthony Gormley and Anish Kapoor. At the end, computer scientists Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace star jointly in a double page spread.

So, including me, and excluding Queen Victoria’s head, there are three women in my passport. There are six men.  Were there really so few creative British woman in history? This is not an EU passport, it’s a GQ passport – a small version of a men’s magazine with inspiring images of chaps of achievement.

I research the design of British passports. There is a new look every five years. This one came out in 2015 so, under current rules, there’s not an official revamp due until 2020. But when Brexit goes ahead, we have just learnt there will be a navy blue passport issued soon thereafter. Could the contents as well as the cover change? Aha. Finally, something about Brexit of which I approve – potentially altering for the better who goes in the British passport, not who gets one.