Palmerston

In serving more than fifty years in public life, Palmerston placed his stamp upon nineteenth-century Britain. Born and bred an eighteenth-century aristocrat, he initially seemed out of place in a world stirred by the twin forces of the French and Industrial Revolutions, and more suited to the dandified life of the beau monde. As a conservative politician, he appeared ill fit for an age of reform, and as Foreign Secretary his gunboat diplomacy courted war and revolution at a time when Europe...