"Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, KG, GCB, PC (20 October 1784? 18 October 1865), known popularly as Lord Palmerston, was a British statesman who served twice as Prime Minister in the mid-19th century. Popularly nicknamed "Pam," or "The Mongoose", he was in government office almost continuously from 1807 until his death in 1865, beginning his parliamentary career as a Tory and concluding it as a Liberal."--Wikipedia.
Britain's Greatest Prime Minister: Lord Liverpool unpicks two centuries of Whig history to redeem Lord Liverpool (1770-1828) from 'arch-mediocrity' and establish him as the greatest political leader the country has ever seen. In the past, biographers of Lord Liverpool have not sufficiently acknowledged the importance of his foremost skill: economic policy (including fiscal, monetary and banking system questions). Here, Hutchinson's decades of experience in the finance sector provide a more specialised perspective on Liverpool's economic legacy than most historians are able to offer. From his adept handling of unparalleled economic and social difficulties, to his strategic defeat of Napoleon and unprecedented approach to the subsequent peace process, Liverpool is shown to have set Britain's course for prosperity and effective government for the following century. In addition to granting him his rightful place among British Prime Ministers on both domestic and foreign policy grounds, Hutchinson advances how a proper regard for Liverpool's career might have changed the structure and policies of today's government for the better.
An analytical investigation into Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s decision-making process during every stage of World War II. When Winston Churchill accepted the position of Prime Minister in May 1940, he insisted in also becoming Minister of Defence. This, though, meant that he alone would be responsible for the success or failure of Britain’s war effort. It also meant that he would be faced with many monumental challenges and utterly crucial decisions upon which the fate of Britain and the free world rested. With the limited resources available to the UK, Churchill had to pinpoint where his country’s priorities lay. He had to respond to the collapse of France, decide if Britain should adopt a defensive or offensive strategy, choose if Egypt and the war in North Africa should take precedence over Singapore and the UK’s empire in the East, determine how much support to give the Soviet Union, and how much power to give the United States in controlling the direction of the war. In this insightful investigation into Churchill’s conduct during the Second World War, Allen Packwood, BA, MPhil (Cantab), FRHistS, the Director of the Churchill Archives Centre, enables the reader to share the agonies and uncertainties faced by Churchill at each crucial stage of the war. How Churchill responded to each challenge is analyzed in great detail and the conclusions Packwood draws are as uncompromising as those made by Britain’s wartime leader as he negotiated his country through its darkest days.
A New York Times 2016 Notable Book Robert Tombs’s momentous The English and Their History is both a startlingly fresh and a uniquely inclusive account of the people who have a claim to be the oldest nation in the world. The English first came into existence as an idea, before they had a common ruler and before the country they lived in even had a name. They have lasted as a recognizable entity ever since, and their defining national institutions can be traced back to the earliest years of their history. The English have come a long way from those first precarious days of invasion and conquest, with many spectacular changes of fortune. Their political, economic and cultural contacts have left traces for good and ill across the world. This book describes their history and its meanings from their beginnings in the monasteries of Northumbria and the wetlands of Wessex to the cosmopolitan energy of today’s England. Robert Tombs draws out important threads running through the story, including participatory government, language, law, religion, the land and the sea, and ever-changing relations with other peoples. Not the least of these connections are the ways the English have understood their own history, have argued about it, forgotten it and yet been shaped by it. These diverse and sometimes conflicting understandings are an inherent part of their identity. Rather to their surprise, as ties within the United Kingdom loosen, the English are suddenly embarking on a new chapter. The English and Their History, the first single-volume work on this scale for more than half a century, and which incorporates a wealth of recent scholarship, presents a challenging modern account of this immense and continuing story, bringing out the strength and resilience of English government, the deep patterns of division and also the persistent capacity to come together in the face of danger.
Lord Palmerston was one of the most successful of all British politicians. Linking the world of the Regency with the middle of Queen Victoria's reign, he was made Secretary at War in 1809 at the age of twenty-five, and held the post for nineteen years. From 1830 to 1841 he was Foreign Secretary. At first he was regarded as weak and ineffectual, a 'Lord Cupid' who was more active in love affairs than in diplomacy; but before the end of his term of office he had raised English prestige in Europe to a record height. Without any special following in Parliament, he became the most popular statesman in the country, because of his vigorous defence of the rights Englishmen abroad. He played a crucial part in the creation of Belgium, saved Portugal and Spain from complete tyranny, rescued Turkey from Russia and saved the route to India from France. He was again Foreign Secretary from 1846-51, when he was in effect dismissed by Queen Victoria after undertaking to show her his foreign dispatches and then manifestly failing to do so. He would probably have averted the Crimean War if he had been Foreign Secretary at the time; and in 1855, at the age of seventy, he finally became Prime Minister, because the public believed he was the only man who could win the war. With a break of sixteen months, he was Prime Minister until he died in 1865. Palmerston was not greatly concerned with morality. His policy, first, last and all the time, was to protect and strengthen British interests, not least by a policy of brinkmanship that preserved the international balance of power and thus made British nineteenth-century prosperity possible. His personal energy and vitality were phenomenal--at the age of seventy-nine he rode from Piccadilly to Harrow in fifty-five minutes--and his treatment of his fellow men and women, from the humblest clerk in the Foreign Office to Metternich, Napoleon III and Queen Victoria, was consistently robust.
