Lord Liverpool

'He gave his name to the longest, and one of the most important, British administrations of the nineteenth century. Yet the man himself has remained a shadowy figure.' Norman Gash, from the introduction Prime Minister at the time of the battle of Waterloo, Robert Banks Jenkinson, the 2nd Earl of Liverpool, was in power from 1812 to 1827. But despite his seeing off the threat of Napoleon, and being British premier during the turbulent years of Peterloo, the Six Acts and the campaign for Catholic Emancipation, Lord Liverpool was later dubbed the 'Arch-Mediocrity' by Disraeli, and was generally forgotten, eclipsed by the events of his day. This biography, first published in 1984, brings both the man and his politics out of the shadows.

Norman Gash was born in India in 1912. In 1933 he took a First in Modern History at St John's College, Oxford. During the Second World War he served in military intelligence and rose to the rank of major. In 1953 he published Politics in the Age of Peel, and after two years at the University of Leeds he was appointed Professor of History at St Andrews, a position he held until 1980. His other publications included The Age of Peel (1968); Reaction and Reconstruction in English Politics, 1832-1852 (1966); Lord Liverpool (1984); Pillars of Government (1986); and Aristocracy and People: England 1815-1865 (1979). He was appointed CBE in 1989, and died in 2009.