"A Superb New Biography . . . A Tragic Story, Brilliantly Told." —Andrew Roberts, Literary Review George Nathaniel Curzon's controversial life in public service stretched from the high noon of his country's empire to the traumatized years following World War I. As viceroy of India under Queen Victoria and foreign secretary under King George V, the obsessive Lord Curzon left his unmistakable mark on the era. David Gilmour's award-winning book—with a new foreword by the author—is a brilliant assessment of Curzon's character and achievements, offering a richly dramatic account of the infamous long vendettas, the turbulent friendships, and the passionate, risky love affairs that complicated and enriched his life. Born into the ruling class of what was then the world's greatest power, Curzon was a fervent believer in British imperialism who spent his life proving he was fit for the task. Often seen as arrogant and tempestuous, he was loathed as much as he was adored, his work disparaged as much as it was admired. In Gilmour's well-rounded appraisal, Curzon emerges as a complex, tragic figure, a gifted leader who saw his imperial world overshadowed at the dawn of democracy.

This is a new release of the original 1927 edition.

Reprint of edition published by Longmans, Green, and Co. in 1892.

As The Wife Of George Curzon, Viceroy Of India From 1899 To 1905, Mary Curzon Was The Youngest Woman To Become Vicereine And The Only American To Attain That Supreme Position. This Volume Collects Her Letters. First Edition. Ex-Libraries.

The lives of the three daughters of Lord Curzon: glamorous, rich, independent and wilful. Irene (born 1896), Cynthia (b.1898) and Alexandria (b.1904) were the three daughters of Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India 1898-1905 and probably the grandest and most self-confident imperial servant Britain ever possessed. After the death of his fabulously rich American wife in 1906, Curzon's determination to control every aspect of his daughters' lives, including the money that was rightfully theirs, led them one by one into revolt against their father. The three sisters were at the very heart of the fast and glittering world of the Twenties and Thirties. Irene, intensely musical and a passionate foxhunter, had love affairs in the glamorous Melton Mowbray hunting set. Cynthia ('Cimmie') married Oswald Mosley, joining him first in the Labour Party, where she became a popular MP herself, before following him into fascism. Alexandra ('Baba'), the youngest and most beautiful, married the Prince of Wales's best friend Fruity Metcalfe. On Cimmie's early death in 1933 Baba flung herself into a long and passionate affair with Mosley and a liaison with Mussolini's ambassador to London, Count Dino Grandi, while enjoying the romantic devotion of the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax. The sisters see British fascism from behind the scenes, and the arrival of Wallis Simpson and the early married life of the Windsors. The war finds them based at 'the Dorch' (the Dorchester Hotel) doing good works. At the end of their extraordinary lives, Irene and Baba have become, rather improbably, pillars of the establishment, Irene being made one of the very first Life Peers in 1958 for her work with youth clubs.

An admirable exegesis of the Pamir region's strategic importance to both Britain's Indian Empire and Russia, On the Indian Frontier is an account of a trek through the Pamirs in 1894, by a future Viceroy of India. It describes the social and political structure of these mountain fiefdoms in rich and dazzling detail.

Yet, seven years later, he was to return home a broken man, his viceroyalty in a shambles, only to be later dispossessed of the Prime Ministership he thought rightfully his. Was this the result of some fatal flaw in Curzon's personality? Curzon has certainly led his earlier biographers to think so, leaving copious writings suggesting that he was brought up by an indifferent mother, a cold father and a savage governess. But new evidence sheds a different light on a more complex personality.