1859-1886
Liberalism and national identity
An examination of the role played by Liberalism in the Victorian construction of a national identity.
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 Kimberley (John Wodehouse), 1826-1902
When Lord Kimberley died on 8 April 1902, he was commonly remembered as Gladstone’s loyal lieutenant: competent, hard-working, and high-minded. By praising these very civilian virtues in the context of war-charged, turn-of-the-century high politics, his twentieth-century eulogists were politely wondering exactly why Kimberley had mattered. After all, as one journalist wrote, he was as far…