Issue 7_Focus from the AOP_July 2026_FINAL - Flipbook - Page 75
Kim Leadbeater (above)
Kim Leadbeater is the Labour MP for Spen Valley and the sister of Jo Cox the MP who was murdered in 2016.
During our first conversation about the portrait, it became very clear that Kim9s constituency in Yorkshire should be the
location. Her strong family ties and love of Yorkshire brought us to a beautiful woodland development in her
constituency created by a local community group. The development is called Jo Cox wood in memory of her late sister.
The local community group have planted trees and created a space for people to wonder through the Yorkshire
countryside.
The portrait we have chosen shows Kim standing on a large rock with a breathtaking view behind her on a day late in
August. Kim chose to wear a formal dress and high heeled shoes to show the contrast of her life from a very formal
Westminster to her rural constituency.
Emily Thornberry (previous page)
Dame Emily Thornberry MP has represented Islington South and Finsbury for twenty years. She was elected Chair of
Parliament9s Foreign Affairs Committee last year, after serving for nearly a decade in the Labour Shadow Cabinet.
We wanted to take photos with globes and maps to represent her focus on foreign affairs. Where better than the Royal
Geographical Society? A fitting location not only because they house over one million maps in their historic Collections
but also because their work with schools, universities, businesses and in policy is driven by a commitment to help
tackle today9s global challenges through the championing of geography.
Director Joe Smith welcomed us and treated us to a tour of the Society9s Collections, sharing the work they are doing
to bring the contributions and achievements of those previously obscured from history to light. Emily was particularly
moved by a picture of Arnarulunnguaq, a Greenlandic woman born in 1896 who travelled 18,000km across the Arctic
and Bering Strait with the Thule expedition. Largely overlooked in past histories of exploration, her photograph now
hangs in the Main Hall of the Society for all to see.
Emily9s portrait was taken in the Society9s Council Room, among historic globes and portraits of geographers and
explorers. She chose to have her picture taken in front of a portrait of Peter Kropotkin, a nineteenth century Russian
physical geographer and key anarchist thinker. During his exile from Imperial Russia key figures in the Society enabled
him to maintain his research and writing, including his educational manifesto 8What Geography Ought to Be' which
argued that geography is not only fundamental to understanding the natural world, but also to nurturing mutual
respect.
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