New Books In Biography

Despite having been Foreign Secretary, Secretary of State for War, Governor-General of Canada and Viceroy of India, Henry Charles Keith Petty-Fitzmaurice, the 5th Marquess of Lansdowne is one of the least well known political figures of the 1st rank in late 19th-century / early 20th-century British politics. The great-grandson of Talleyrand and according to Lord Vansittart, the Foreign Secretary with the best command of French of any in his personal experience, Lord Lansdowne has not had a biography devoted to him since the official one by Lord Newton almost ninety-years ago. To rectify this horrible oversight, Lansdowne’s direct descendent, Simon, Lord Kerry, has written a brilliant life of his famous ancestor–Lansdowne: The Last Great Whig (Unicorn Publishing Group, 2018). Covering the entirety of Lansdowne political life, Simon Kerry brings out the inner Lord Lansdowne, which was not readily seen by his contemporaries. The Lansdowne who almost single-handled engineered the revolution in British foreign po