Britain

Barrington’s admiration for the humanity, wit and decisiveness of his chief are affectionately apparent in this portrait of the great Whig Prime Minister at the height of his powers.

A further selection from a memoir Barrington composed towards the close of his life and transmitted to his kinsman, the third Earl of Durham. Through his connections with leading political families, and official appointments he held at 10 Downing Street and the Treasury, Barrington was in an excellent position from which to observe and comment on the personalities of the nineteenth century including Brougham, Melbourne, Peel and Gladstone.

Terence H. O'Brien describes how Alfred Milner, later the apostle of the British Empire, paid a revealing visit as a young man to Ireland, then in the throes of the Home Rule struggle.

Peter Stansky & William Abrahams describe how, after Tennyson’s death, the problem of finding a new Poet Laureate perturbed successive British governments.

The supreme direction of the First World War has remained a matter of controversy; in this essay, John Terraine contrasts Lloyd George’s hopes with the manner of their realization.

Thomas Pakenham describes the ill-fated but remarkable efforts of a tiny French naval expedition to help conquer Ireland for the rebels during the 1798 Rising.

J.D. Scott describes how a London banker, of Danish origin, played a large part in financing the unification of Italy.

Georgina Battiscombe introduces the Dean of Windsor; the wisest of Queen Victoria’s private counsellors and a relation of the Duke of Wellington.

‘If this Empire seems an evil thing to me, it is not because I hate the British...’ B.G. Gokhale on Gandhi’s attitudes to empire upon the centenary of his birth.

In 18th-century British politics, eloquence might change votes on the spot. Loren Reid describes how the voice of Whig politician Charles James Fox often did exactly that.