ONE of Oxfordshire’s most iconic buildings will adorn the pages of the new UK passport when it is unveiled in October this year.
Blenheim Palace will take a place alongside the white cliffs of Dover, Ben Nevis in Scotland, the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, and the Gower peninsula in Wales as part of a selection of images of picture postcard Britain. The redesigned passport has several features to make it more difficult to forge such as having the chip on the inside of the cover so it is more difficult to remove.
The £400m scheme to upgrade the passport will also see two pages of personal details on the holder, extra holograms and overprinting of composite images of Britain, including Blenheim, to make it harder to copy.
Blenheim was built in the 1760s and is famous for being the birthplace of Winston Churchill.
Blenheim chief executive John Hoy said: “It’s a great honour to be one of the few sites to be chosen for this important duty. As a World Heritage site and one of the greatest palaces in England we’re delighted to be selected.
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