Time Period: 1830-1859
‘The representative man’
Reviews of Kenneth Bourne, Palmerston: The Early Years 1783-1841 (Allen Lane, 1982) and Donald Southgate, The Most English Minister (Macmillan, 1966).
Dizzy and the Grand Old Man
Review of Richard Aldous, The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone vs Disraeli (Hutchinson, 2006).
No one likes us, we don’t care
Review of Leslie Mitchell, The Whig World 1760-1837 (Hambledon Continuum, 2005).
Promoting progress everywhere
Review of Jonathan Parry, The Politics of Patriotism: English Liberalism, National Identity and Europe 1830-1886 (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
Out of Chartism, into Liberalism?
Popular radicals and the Liberal Party in mid-Victorian Britain.
Coalition before 1886
Whigs, Peelites and Liberals: an examination of coalitions before 1886.
The Age of Russell and Palmerston, 1846-1868
The collapse of Sir Robert Peel's Conservative government, following the 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws, began a complex re-arrangement of British political parties; one that took more than a decade to complete. Paradoxically, by rejecting Peel, the remaining Tories held the advantage of unity in their desire to protect agricultural interests and the established…
Secular intellectuals
Review of William C. Lubenow, Liberal Intellectuals and Public Culture in Modern Britain, 1815-1914: Making Words Flesh (Boydell Press, 2010).
The strange birth of Liberal England
One hundred and fifty years ago, on the 6 June 1859, at Willis Rooms in St James, Westminster, Radical, Peelite and Whig Members of Parliament met to formalise their Parliamentary coalition to oust the Conservative government and finally brought about the formation of the Liberal Party. To commemorate the compact made at Willis Rooms in…
The Great Reform Act of 1832: its legacy and influence on the Coalition’s reform agenda
Soon after becoming Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg promised “the most significant programmes of reform by a British government since the 19th century…. the biggest shake-up of our democracy since 1832.” But how do the Coalition governments constitutional changes actually compare to the changes brought in by the Great Reform Bill of 1832? Dr Philip…