Of all the places to have a minor PhD epiphany I wasn’t expecting it to be the Emergency Services Museum in Sheffield. On the face of it, my topic, the history of British MP’s switching political parties has no relevance to a museum filled with police, fire service and ambulance related exhibitions. That’s why I was so surprised when I looked closely at the badge of this classic police car.

I recognised the car model, Wolseley from a small tidbit in the diary of the former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown. When Ashdown was courting the defection of the dissatisfied Conservative MP Peter Thurnham, Lib Dem HQ decided to refer to him only by a codename, lest an overheard conversation leak to the press. They settled on the alias Wolseley, a type of vintage car Thurnham reportedly collected. So there I was, stood excitedly photographing a car for reasons that had nothing to do with motoring and everything to do with an obscure political anecdote. My solo museum tour was already proving to be more closely connected to my PhD than I could ever have expected. I was consequently astonished when I looked at the next vehicle…

Behind the 1947 Wolseley police car sat a dark blue Austin ambulance. I read the manufacturer again. Austin, I knew that type of vehicle too! When Paddy Ashdown began defection discussions with the Conservative MP Emma Nicholson, he gave her the codename Austin, continuing the convention established with Thurnham of a motoring inspired alias. When I initially read Ashdown’s diary entry, I hadn’t bothered looking up Wolseley and Austin cars. There are only so many obscure tangents a PhD allows, and investigating the cars behind Thurnham’s and Nicholson’s codenames felt like one indulgence too far. However, now I’d seen them at the Emergency Services museum I began connecting dots.

Nicholson wasn’t just given the alias Austin because it was another type of car. It was the natural counterpart to Thurnham’s Wolseley codename: one vehicle was an iconic British police car, the other a famous model of ambulance. Ultimately, while this small epiphany is unlikely to make it’s way to the chapters of my finished thesis, the discovery was a cool reminder of how even the most unlikely detours can sometimes reward your research.

If you find yourself with a free afternoon, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the Emergency Services Museum. Wholeheartedly recommend checking it out.