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Sir Edward Grey: A Biography of Lord Grey of Fallodon
Sir Edward Grey is one of the enigmas of British political history. In an age of political giants--Lloyd George, Asquith, Curzon and Churchill--his position as Foreign Secretary in the last years of the great Liberal Governments has been shadowy and unresolved.
His detractors dismiss him as the quintessence of incompetence, the upper-class 'amateur' statesman, a dilettante concerned more with his fishing and his ducks than with foreign affairs, with his Northumbrian estates rather than with the Realpolitik of the great Empire in a time of gathering troubles. His supporters, even his only previous biographer, fellow-Northumbrian, and fellow-nature lover, G. M. Trevelyan, have unwittingly contributed to the view that Grey would have done better to stick to his rods and the breeding habits of his ducks; seeking to delineate the qualities of his character, often knowing little and caring less about his public life, they have emphasized his attributes as a 'country gentleman' and ignored his patent ability to survive successfully the rough and tumble of Edwardian politics in the years leading up to the first World War.
For this same Grey brushed challenges aside to remain the seemingly irreplaceable head of the Foreign Office, the most important department of state, for eleven consecutive, crucial years of war and peace, from 1905 until 1916. Why this was so, given Grey's other interests, has been to many the most baffling problem in any assessment of his place in history. But in re-examining all the seemingly contradictory facets of Grey's life in depth, and in the light of the new evidence he has assembled, Dr Robbins shows them to be not only credible, but wholly compatible. The tough, tenacious politician who hated politics was indeed the man whose memorial is in part the Edward Grey Ornithological Institute at Oxford; the naturalist author was the parliamentarian with forceful views on Ireland, female suffrage, and the future of the House of Lords; the man whose personal life was dogged by tragedy and dimmed by growing blindness was, as Dr Robbins clearly shows, the last but by no means least of a long line of great British Foreign Secretaries.
Sir Edward Grey is a revisionist biography of the finest sort. Dr Robbins's researches have brought to light a mass of previously unexamined or unpublished material in private and public collections in Britain and overseas, and in the Royal Archives. It is likely to remain the definitive work on Grey, a comprehensive portrait of an experienced, positive statesman with a degree of professional toughness which, unrevealed before, makes understandable at last the respect and trust accorded Grey by great contemporaries in his own country and overseas during his long years in high office.
His detractors dismiss him as the quintessence of incompetence, the upper-class 'amateur' statesman, a dilettante concerned more with his fishing and his ducks than with foreign affairs, with his Northumbrian estates rather than with the Realpolitik of the great Empire in a time of gathering troubles. His supporters, even his only previous biographer, fellow-Northumbrian, and fellow-nature lover, G. M. Trevelyan, have unwittingly contributed to the view that Grey would have done better to stick to his rods and the breeding habits of his ducks; seeking to delineate the qualities of his character, often knowing little and caring less about his public life, they have emphasized his attributes as a 'country gentleman' and ignored his patent ability to survive successfully the rough and tumble of Edwardian politics in the years leading up to the first World War.
For this same Grey brushed challenges aside to remain the seemingly irreplaceable head of the Foreign Office, the most important department of state, for eleven consecutive, crucial years of war and peace, from 1905 until 1916. Why this was so, given Grey's other interests, has been to many the most baffling problem in any assessment of his place in history. But in re-examining all the seemingly contradictory facets of Grey's life in depth, and in the light of the new evidence he has assembled, Dr Robbins shows them to be not only credible, but wholly compatible. The tough, tenacious politician who hated politics was indeed the man whose memorial is in part the Edward Grey Ornithological Institute at Oxford; the naturalist author was the parliamentarian with forceful views on Ireland, female suffrage, and the future of the House of Lords; the man whose personal life was dogged by tragedy and dimmed by growing blindness was, as Dr Robbins clearly shows, the last but by no means least of a long line of great British Foreign Secretaries.
Sir Edward Grey is a revisionist biography of the finest sort. Dr Robbins's researches have brought to light a mass of previously unexamined or unpublished material in private and public collections in Britain and overseas, and in the Royal Archives. It is likely to remain the definitive work on Grey, a comprehensive portrait of an experienced, positive statesman with a degree of professional toughness which, unrevealed before, makes understandable at last the respect and trust accorded Grey by great contemporaries in his own country and overseas during his long years in high office.
438 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1971
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About the author
Keith Robbins
50 booksKeith Gilbert Robbins FRSE FRHistS FLSW was a historian and former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Wales, Lampeter. A specialist in modern British history, Robbins was educated at Bristol Grammar School, and Magdalen and St Antony’s Colleges, Oxford.
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November 15, 2020
Sir Edward Grey is a notable figure in a number of respects. Foremost among them is because of his tenure as British Foreign Secretary, which at eleven years is the longest single period of time anyone has ever held that post. That he served as Foreign Secretary in the years leading up to the First World War makes his tenure even more significant, as by playing a pivotal part in the events that brought Britain into the conflict he shaped the history of not just his own country but that of Europe and the rest of the world.
That Grey proved as influential as he was to the course of events was because of another notable aspect of his career. As Keith Robbins notes, Grey was the last Foreign Secretary who operated with the same independence of action that his predecessors had enjoyed in the nineteenth century. Though his successors would play important roles in shaping Britain’s international policy, none of them would do so with the same degree of autonomy enjoyed by Grey throughout most of his tenure in office.
Such a figure is well deserving of a study of his life and achievements. And this is what Robbins provides in his book, which was the first biography of Grey written with the benefit of access to the public records from his time at the Foreign Office. This helps him to compensate somewhat for the lack of personal papers, the absence of which has made assessing his formative years difficult. Grey’s youth and education are covered in a single chapter, with the narrative slowing down once he enters politics. Yet it is a testament to Robbins’s skill as a biographer that his coverage of Grey’s early life does not feel scanty or inadequate, but conveys a sense of his early life and the influences on it.
Though Grey won election as a Liberal to Parliament at the age of 23 and experienced a rapid rise in the party ranks, Robbins details the conflicted nature of his involvement with politics, as he frequently contemplated leaving it even as he emerged as one of the party’s leading figures on foreign policy. In many ways Grey was a bridge between the party’s past and its future: a descendant of the Whig gentry who nonetheless held progressive positions on such issues as women’s suffrage. That he was widely viewed by many as a potential prime minister reflected the esteem in which he was held by his colleagues, yet Grey himself seemed unwilling to pursue the post given the strain of his career on his fragile health.
Having established a background in foreign policy during his time as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in William Gladstone’s final government, Grey was a natural choice to become Foreign Secretary when the Liberals formed a government in 1905. The chapters on Grey’s time at the Foreign Office take up over half the book, and offer a generally favorable account of Grey’s management of Britain’s foreign relations. Though Robbins draws out the alignments of Grey’s policies, he adopts a chronological approach that highlights the often reactive nature of Grey’s experience in the post. His direction of policy became much more constrained by the outbreak of war in 1914, though Grey soldiered on until the collapse of the Asquith coalition in December 1916 ended his tenure in office.
Overall Robbins’s book provides an excellent overview of Grey’s service in public office. While his book suffers somewhat from a more constrained examination of Grey’s private life and inner motivations this is a natural consequence of the limitations imposed by the available sources, though his abbreviated final chapter on Grey’s post-ministerial career could have been fleshed out more than it was. Nonetheless, Robbins’s book serves as a good starting point for anyone seeking to learn about the Foreign Secretary who played a key role in determining the course of the decades that followed.
That Grey proved as influential as he was to the course of events was because of another notable aspect of his career. As Keith Robbins notes, Grey was the last Foreign Secretary who operated with the same independence of action that his predecessors had enjoyed in the nineteenth century. Though his successors would play important roles in shaping Britain’s international policy, none of them would do so with the same degree of autonomy enjoyed by Grey throughout most of his tenure in office.
Such a figure is well deserving of a study of his life and achievements. And this is what Robbins provides in his book, which was the first biography of Grey written with the benefit of access to the public records from his time at the Foreign Office. This helps him to compensate somewhat for the lack of personal papers, the absence of which has made assessing his formative years difficult. Grey’s youth and education are covered in a single chapter, with the narrative slowing down once he enters politics. Yet it is a testament to Robbins’s skill as a biographer that his coverage of Grey’s early life does not feel scanty or inadequate, but conveys a sense of his early life and the influences on it.
Though Grey won election as a Liberal to Parliament at the age of 23 and experienced a rapid rise in the party ranks, Robbins details the conflicted nature of his involvement with politics, as he frequently contemplated leaving it even as he emerged as one of the party’s leading figures on foreign policy. In many ways Grey was a bridge between the party’s past and its future: a descendant of the Whig gentry who nonetheless held progressive positions on such issues as women’s suffrage. That he was widely viewed by many as a potential prime minister reflected the esteem in which he was held by his colleagues, yet Grey himself seemed unwilling to pursue the post given the strain of his career on his fragile health.
Having established a background in foreign policy during his time as Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs in William Gladstone’s final government, Grey was a natural choice to become Foreign Secretary when the Liberals formed a government in 1905. The chapters on Grey’s time at the Foreign Office take up over half the book, and offer a generally favorable account of Grey’s management of Britain’s foreign relations. Though Robbins draws out the alignments of Grey’s policies, he adopts a chronological approach that highlights the often reactive nature of Grey’s experience in the post. His direction of policy became much more constrained by the outbreak of war in 1914, though Grey soldiered on until the collapse of the Asquith coalition in December 1916 ended his tenure in office.
Overall Robbins’s book provides an excellent overview of Grey’s service in public office. While his book suffers somewhat from a more constrained examination of Grey’s private life and inner motivations this is a natural consequence of the limitations imposed by the available sources, though his abbreviated final chapter on Grey’s post-ministerial career could have been fleshed out more than it was. Nonetheless, Robbins’s book serves as a good starting point for anyone seeking to learn about the Foreign Secretary who played a key role in determining the course of the decades that followed.
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