Shard

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/apr/02/uk-passport-dark-blue-brexit-eu

Keep reading about dark blue passports. Weren't the old ones in fact black?

quiltman

Nope! looked black but were in fact very deep blue. Just checked with my old one.

Jerseygirl

Still got mine and its navy blue.

scot47

Now that Queen Victoria is back and we are at war with Spain will we get the old passports back ?

Shard

Apparently, they weren't issued in book form until 1929...

BristolUK

Rather than going back to the old colour - especially with those silly white bits that really date them - I'm surprised nobody has suggested a union jack passport or something like those passport covers.



Judging by some of the attitudes displayed since the vote, perhaps the passports should be all white.

BristolUK

I wonder if, in the same way some folk put their EU passports inside a wallet that looked like the old British passport, some will put their new British passports inside a wallet looking like the 'old' EU one.

Pica

Load of rubbish about nothing! Waste of time and money to change it.

Novocastrian

Wors's aalways been blue.

FishAndChips00

Passports are a 'modern' invention, their use was marginal before WW-1.

In Victorian times, peak Empire, people travelled the world without needing a passport, or even having seen one. This was also true outside the Empire. Stefan Zweig, an Austro-Hungarian citizen at the time, travelled passport-free to India and America in the nineteen-naughties.

By the 1940s, his younger friends were as astonished by this as we are. You don't value what you've got until you lose it.

scot47

I was making use of a literary device known as "Irony". Other ranks might understand it better as "Taking the Mickey".

not2old

when the UK changes the passport back to 'Dark Blue' I would like to see it style & soft cover like the Canadian passport & without all the different coloured pictures & images that are on the current British passport

not2old

FWIW, a wki entry

"Safe Conduct documents, usually notes signed by the monarch, were issued to foreigners as well as English subjects in medieval times. They were first mentioned in an Act of Parliament, the Safe Conducts Act in 1414.

Between 1540 and 1685, the Privy Council issued passports, although they were still signed by the monarch until the reign of Charles II when the Secretary of State could sign them instead. The Secretary of State signed all passports in place of the monarch from 1794 onwards, at which time formal records started to be kept.[10]

Passports were written in Latin or English until 1772, when French was used instead. From about 1855 English was used, with some sections translated into French for many years.

In 1855 passports became a standardised document issued solely to British nationals. They were a simple single-sheet paper document, and by 1914 included a photograph of the holder.

Some duplicate passports and passport records are available at the British Library; for example IOR: L/P&J/11 contain a few surviving passports of travelling ayahs for the 1930s.[11]

A passport issued on 18 June 1641 and signed by King Charles I still exists

mikelincs

I agree, it will cost something like £50 million to change the colour, just imagine how many new NHS hospitals that could be used for.

dave_j

You can do a lot with a hardback document that you can't with softback.
I wonder whether unannounced security devices will be 'hidden' within the covers?
An opportunity perhaps.