Each month No 10 invites a professional historian to contribute a short article to this series.
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 …
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 …
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 …
William Pitt (the younger) was born on 28 May 1759 at Hayes Place, Kent, the second son of William Pitt (the elder), later 1st Earl of Chatham and himself Prime Minister. He matriculated at Pembroke College, Cambridge at the age …
On her 21st birthday in 1947 Princess Elizabeth broadcast from Cape Town in South Africa: I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of …
William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne, and from 1784 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, was born in Dublin on 2 May 1737 to a Kerry landed family, the Fitzmaurices (his father changed the family name to Petty in 1751 on …
Lord North was born in London on 13 April 1732, the son of the future first earl of Guildford, Francis North, then 3rd baron, and the godson – some believed (probably erroneously) in fact the son – of the Prince …
Augustus Henry FitzRoy, third Duke of Grafton, was the last of those to enjoy relatively short periods as First Lord of the Treasury during the 1760s. Born in September 1735, the death of his father in 1741 and his paternal …