Britain’s new passport will feature King Charles III’s Coat of Arms, four carefully selected national landscapes and upgraded anti forgery technology, giving it the authority required to spend its working life face down in an airport tray beside a damp boarding pass.
The redesigned document is due to be issued from December and will show Ben Nevis, the Lake District, Three Cliffs Bay and the Giant’s Causeway. Travellers can admire the country’s natural wonders while being ordered to remove a bottle containing 101 millilitres of water as though it were transporting the crown jewels.
The Bureau of Tiny Liquids has welcomed the development. Its deputy chair, Lionel Lanyard, said the Coat of Arms would add suitable gravitas to the moment a passport is held upside down at an e gate while its owner whispers, “Come on, you know me.”
“It combines heritage, beauty and cutting edge security,” said Mavis Stampington, Keeper of the Officially Helpful Queue. “The pages are now harder to forge, although the machine will still reject a person because their fringe has moved since the photograph.”
HM Passport Office says the new book will include holographic and translucent features, making it easier to verify and harder to tamper with. This is reassuring. The greater test remains whether it can identify the citizen who says, “I’m sure it was in this pocket,” before emptying a travel wallet containing two expired loyalty cards, a mysterious key and a receipt from 2019.
The new design replaces the previous royal arms and continues the proud tradition of placing national identity inside an object most often retrieved from behind an old driving licence. Britain has commissioned intricate security artwork for a document that will immediately be folded into a wallet beside a supermarket points card and the emotional consequences of booking a budget flight.
At the unveiling, a passport was placed on a velvet cushion. An airport security tray rolled past and regarded it with the calm superiority of an object that had already confiscated three bottles of shampoo before breakfast.
The passport may now be among the most secure documents in the world. It will still face the airport ritual in which a traveller removes their shoes, belt, dignity and entire electronic history before discovering that the passport has been in their hand all along. At least the tray will know where it is.
Real story: HM Passport Office.
