Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, dominated British foreign policy for much of the mid-nineteenth century and twice served as prime minister. He favoured active diplomacy, naval power and intervention when he believed British interests or prestige were at stake.

His career encompassed the Greek crisis, European revolutions, the Crimean War and disputes over Italy and China. Popular with many voters, he was also criticised for impulsiveness and imperial aggression. Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston was born in Broadlands and died in Brocket Hall.

M. J. Carter’s The Devil’s Feast uses Palmerston as the political sponsor behind a diplomatic banquet for Ibrahim Pasha at the Reform Club, turning the possibility of poisoning into an affair that could embarrass the government as well as destroy Alexis Soyer. Amitav Ghosh’s Flood of Fire places Palmerston’s foreign policy behind the decision to use force against Qing China when the opium trade is restricted, linking cabinet strategy in London to the expedition assembled in India. Crimean War supplies the wider diplomatic setting of the coalition conflict with Russia in which Palmerston was one of Britain’s most forceful political voices. Lawrence James’ The Rise and Fall of the British Empire sets his interventionist career within the nineteenth-century expansion of British naval, commercial and imperial power.