Lansdowne: The Last Great Whig

(Hardback)

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Over the course of a distinguished fifty-year career Lord Lansdowne served as Governor-General of Canada, Viceroy of India,Secretary of State for War, Foreign Secretary and Leader of the House of Lords. It was Lansdowne who engineered the crucial changes in British foreign policy and the burden of Britains imperial commitments, led the House of Lords through one of the most divisive periods of modern times and at the end of the First World War, became a figure of notoriety greater than any of the popular leaders of the day. His life illustrates the challenges his class had to face at this time and acts as a prism through which to view the transition of Britain from a global force to a much reduced power. Simon Kerry shows that many of the issues Lansdowne faced are still important today and that his career profoundly affected the course of modern history.

Reviews

"Simon (Earl of) Kerry is a direct descendant of Lansdowne and the current heir to his title, but this book is no work of family piety....The last great Whig would not have wanted a biography written passionately in his defence. Simon Kerry lays out the facts of a remarkable life fully and with calm authority. That is what this forgotten statesman would have regarded as the proper course, and it makes this book a major contribution to modern political history."--Lord Lexden, OBE "This extremely well-researched and well-written biography by Simon Kerry... shows that Lansdowne was much more than just a safe pair of hands.... [T]his book marks the arrival on the scene of a major new sleuthing historian of modern Britain. His efforts have been well rewarded by an avalanche of new material not mentioned in the only other biography of Lansdowne, which was published in 1929."--Andrew Roberts "Literary Review " "The 5th Marquess of Lansdowne's life coincides with the Victorian high point of the British Empire, and he had an enormous part in it. He was a grandee of grandees. . . . This is an admiring biography also in the Victorian mould."--Norman Stone "The Oldie "; `Simon Kerry should...be congratulated for writing the first modern Life of such a relic from a bygone time....Kerry's great achievement is his re-evaluation of Lansdowne's ministerial career between 1895-1905...as War Minister...If one concludes this biography with a sense of irony, it is because all of the things that Lansdowne was feted for in his lifetime...have become worthless or reprehensible...whereas the gesture for which he was politically vilified and socially ostracised is the one which will probably win the greatest admiration of the modern reader' Ian Cawood, Times Literary Supplement; `Lansdowne lived on until 1927. By then, events had swept away much of what he had sought to preserve. Neither his principles nor his political style seemed to have a place in a world torn between mass democracy and revolution. But his Whiggish commitment to liberal politicsthe kind that combines duty, restraint and prudence with orderly governmentneed not be judged naive or pass. Indeed, Mr. Kerrys ne study of the man and his world shows how necessary such a commitment remains today Wall Street Journal

Author Bio

Simon Kerry was awarded an MA in Archaeology at Jesus College, Cambridge, and a doctorate in late Victorian British History at the University of East Anglia in 2015. He is married and lives in London.