Lord Ripon 1827-1909. A Political Biography
Ian Bradley on a biography of a Liberal Viceroy and long-standing governmental servant.
- Lord Ripon 1827 – 1909. A Political Biography
Anthony Denholm. 287 pp. (Croom Helm, 1982)
Lord Ripon is remembered, if, indeed, he is remembered at all nowadays, as the Liberal Viceroy of India in the early 1880s who applied Gladstonian principles of self determination and sowed the seeds of independence for the Raj.
In fact, as Anthony Denholm's new biography shows, the viceroyalty was only one comparatively brief episode in a long and worthy public career dedicated to numerous good and improving causes. Ripon, the son of 'Prosperity Robinson' Prime Minister from 1827 to 1828, had an impressively long period of governmental service which began under Palmerston in 1859 and ended under Campbell Sannerman in 1908.