Palmerston

British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston has enjoyed a rakish reputation as womaniser, careless aristocrat and the apostle of gun-boat diplomacy. His lengthy life linked the American War of Independence with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the colourful Regency period with the era of Queen Victoria, the French Revolution with the birth of the future King George V, the age of Pitt with the days of Gladstone and Disraeli. His political career brought him three times to the Foreign Office and twice to the Premiership. He set out as a dutiful Tory, became the darling of Radicals throughout Europe, and ended his career as 'Old Pam', the personification of British courage and lion-heartedness. But there was more to Palmerston than bluster and patriotism, as Denis Judd so clearly shows in this sympathetic but never uncritical biography. Palmerston was a meticulous and hard-working minister, with hardly enough time for the scandalous personal life with which he is popularly credited. In this book, Judd provides a multifaceted and nuanced life of this Victorian titan