1830-1859
Views of Peel
Review of Richard A. Gaunt, Sir Robert Peel: The Life and Legacy (I. B. Tauris, 2010).
Liberalism and national identity
An examination of the role played by Liberalism in the Victorian construction of a national identity. To access this content, you must purchase Annual subscription (digital) – unwaged rate or Annual subscription (digital) – standard rate.
Liberals in Ulster
Review of Gerald R. Hall, Ulster Liberalism 1778-1876 (Four Courts Press, 2011).
Viscount Palmerston (Henry John Temple), 1784-1865
If we date the modern Liberal Party from the 1859 meeting in Willis’ Tea Rooms, we must accord Palmerston the honour of being the first Liberal Prime Minister, though he would have thought himself the Queen’s minister and the nation’s leader rather than a party’s. In truth, he was more the last of the old…
Earl of Aberdeen (George Hamilton-Gordon), 1784-1860
Lord Aberdeen was the Prime Minister who first brought together the coalition of Whigs, Peelites and Radicals which later became the Liberal Party. He is perhaps best known for being premier at the time of the Crimean War. After his death several copies of a text were found which seemed to indicate that he felt…
Earl Granville (Granville George Leveson Gower), 1815-1891
For more than thirty years, at the height of its strength in the country, Lord Granville led the Victorian Liberal Party in the House of Lords, where it was in a perpetual minority. His diplomatic skills contributed significantly to its legislative achievements and to preserving the unity of a party always threatening to splinter. Granville…
Lord John Russell (Earl Russell), 1792-1878
The leading Liberal politician from the mid-1830s to the mid-1850s, Russell was twice Prime Minister; he was associated particularly with the issues of parliamentary, educational and Irish reform. He was a Foxite Whig who updated Fox’s attitudes to make them more relevant to the second quarter of the nineteenth century, and added to them a…
Viscount Melbourne (William Lamb), 1779-1848
Right from his London birth on 15 March 1779, at Melbourne House in Piccadilly, William Lamb, second Viscount Melbourne, was at the centre of Whig social circles. The second son of Peniston Lamb, first Viscount Melbourne, he followed a normal early life for sons of Whig magnates Eton, Cambridge University, and education for a legal…
Earl Grey (Charles Grey), 1764-1845
Charles Grey, second Earl Grey, Viscount Howick and Baron Grey, was the Prime Minister who oversaw the Great Reform Act of 1832, which overhauled the country’s parliamentary electoral system and was the culmination of two years of intense political crisis. Born on 13 March 1764, at Fallodon in Northumberland, his youth was spent in a…