“Everything is but discourse until his Majesty gives his consent”: this statement made by Sir Thomas Roe, an English diplomat in 1636 [1], may seem a little tongue in cheek but it provides some truth as to how the Privy …
The most detailed and literary diaries of all the occupants of 10 Downing Street were those kept by Harold Macmillan and William Gladstone. There are, however, two significant differences between these prime ministerial diaries. Gladstone kept a diary throughout his …
For almost 80 years the distinguished profile of Sir Edward Grey has looked on as the great and the good have made their way in and out of the ‘Ambassador’s Entrance’ of the Foreign Office. But how did this memorial …
1 December 2015 marks the 90th anniversary of the formal signing of the Locarno Treaties at the Foreign Office in London. Named after the town in Switzerland where the treaties had been negotiated a few months earlier, their aim was …
Frederick John Robinson was the younger son of the 2nd Baron Grantham, and was raised mainly by his mother, the daughter of the 2nd Earl of Hardwicke, after his father died when he was three years old. He was educated …
Spencer Perceval was born in Audley Square, London on 1 November 1762, the second son of the second marriage of the second Earl of Egmont (and so a man of comparatively slender means). He attended Harrow School and then Trinity …
William Wyndham Grenville was born on 24 October 1759 in Buckinghamshire, the youngest son of an earlier Prime Minister, George Grenville, and cousin of a future one, William Pitt. He studied at Eton, Christ Church Oxford and Lincoln’s Inn, but …
In the early hours of Tuesday, 12 October 1915, Edith Cavell, a British nurse who had been working in Belgium, was executed by the Germans after being found guilty of helping over 200 Allied servicemen escape to England. At her …
When the Post Office Tower was officially opened on 8 October 1965 by Prime Minister Harold Wilson, it was Britain’s tallest building. It was also seen as a symbolising a new, exciting technological revolution and a new spirit of optimism, …
Henry Addington, born on 30 May 1757, was eldest son of a successful London physician, Dr Anthony Addington. He passed through Winchester College and other schools on his path to Brasenose College, Oxford, and then Lincoln’s Inn, becoming a barrister …