This is a new release of the original 1927 edition.

"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.

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.

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

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.

In the heyday of Empire just before the First World War, Lord Cromer was second only to Lord Curzon in fame and public esteem. In the days when Cairo and Calcutta represented the twin poles of British power in Asia and Africa, Cromer's commanding presence seemed to radiate the essential spiritof imperial rule. In this first modern biography Roger Owen charts the life of the man revered by the British and hated by today's Egyptians, the real ruler of Egypt for nearly a quarter of a century.A member of the famous City banking family of Baring Brothers, Cromer in his youth seemed to be distinguished mainly by lack of academic ability and a taste for the fashionable pursuits of his day. His first military posting, to Corfu, was welcomed by him on account of the excellent shooting to behad in the region. Roger Owen shows how, almost imperceptibly, his commitment to public service grew, due in part at least to his relationship with Ethel Errington who, after long delay, became his first wife. From the island outposts of the old British Empire, to India, the jewel in its crown, and finally to the new Empire in Africa, Cromer represented the might of Britain's Empire. Few imperial administrators had either his range of experience or his long practice of ruling different non-Europeanpeoples, at a time when the whole notion of Empire itself entered more and more into the metropolitan political debate. Roger Owen makes extensive use of Cromer's official correspondence, family papers, memoirs, and the personal letters of his friends and colleagues to explore all aspects of Cromer's life in imperial government. He examines his innovative role in international finance and his energetic re-engagementwith Britain's troubled political life following his formal retirement in 1907. Finally, he assesses the sometimes bitter legacy of imperial rule left by Cromer.