1859-1886
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Land and nation in England
Review of Paul Readman, Patriotism, National Identity, and the Politics of Land, 1880-1914 (Royal Historical Society, 2008).
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Celebrating 1859: Party, Patriotism and Liberal Values
On 6 June 1859, 280 Whig, Liberal, former Peelite and radical MPs met at Willis’s Rooms in King Street, St. James’s. They gathered to agree on a strategy to oust Lord Derby’s Conservative government from office. Angus Hawkins analyses the significance of this key event in Liberal history.
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The high summer of Victorian Liberalism
Review of Ian Bradley, The Optimists: Themes and Personalities in Victorian Liberalism (Faber & Faber, 1980).
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Secular intellectuals
Review of William C. Lubenow, Liberal Intellectuals and Public Culture in Modern Britain, 1815-1914: Making Words Flesh (Boydell Press, 2010).
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Gladstone’s second government
The Liberals won the 1880 election by a greater margin than anticipated, gaining 112 seats and, despite the strength of the Irish nationalist party, a majority of over 50 against all other parties. Despite significant achievements including the 1884 Reform Act the 1880-1885 Gladstonian administration has not been celebrated in the same way as its…
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The Midlothian Campaign
A year after the defeat of his government in 1874, William Ewart Gladstone retired as leader of the Liberal Party. At 65, he deeply desired an interval between parliament and the grave to devote to religious affairs. Indeed, it was while engrossed in notes on Future Retribution that he was called away to write the…
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Gladstone’s Parliamentary Record 1868-1900
William Gladstone led the Liberal Party in four governments over a quarter of a century (1868-74, 1880-85, 1886, 1892-94) bringing to fruition a wide range of reforms and almost coming to define Liberalism.
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Joseph Chamberlain, 1836-1914
In a picture postcard (Tuck & Sons Ltd, c. 1905) Radical Joseph was pictured wearing a coat of many colours. Each segment was labelled with different stages in his political career: socialist, extreme radical, Gladstonian, Liberal Unionist, Conservative and protectionist and food taxer. Inconsistent was one of the more favourable epithets used of Chamberlain. To…