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‘Not getting his meals in the kitchen’: L ord A cton's Quest for Public Office, 1892–1894
Author(s) -
Otte T. G.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.12
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1468-229X
pISSN - 0018-2648
DOI - 10.1111/1468-229x.12048
Subject(s) - ideology , politics , biography , public office , public life , period (music) , compensation (psychology) , law , history , political science , art , aesthetics , psychology , social psychology
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.