‘Not getting his meals in the kitchen’: L ord A cton's Quest for Public Office, 1892–1894

The historian L ord A cton is best known as L ord R osebery's choice for the Regius Chair of Modern History at C ambridge U niversity in 1895. This outcome was not the inexorable culmination an historian's career. It was rather a form of compensation for the failure of A cton's earlier ambitions for political or public office. Drawing on hitherto largely untapped archival material this article re‐examines this crucial period in the final decade of A cton's life. To an extent, this is a study in failure. A cton's attempt to re‐enter public life remained abortive. But this study goes beyond adding to our understanding of A cton's biography. His quest for public office furnishes a useful prism to study also the prolonged post‐ G ladstonian transition phase in L iberal politics in the middle part of the 1890s, its underlying ideological fissures and the problematic personal relations at the top of the L iberal Party.