Diplomacy, Satire and the Victorians

E. C. Grenville-Murray was a diplomat-journalist whose savage and inventive satires on British diplomacy gave impetus to the mid-Victorian movement for diplomatic reform and outstanding craftsmanship with the pen made him a legend in the press during that epoch. But since then he has been almost completely forgotten. This is partly because he made too many powerful enemies, with the result that his name was blackened and he was forced into permanent French exile; and partly because he wrote either pseudonymously or anonymously.

This book, which rests on extensive use of private papers, official documents, press archives and not least Grenville-Murray’s vast output (including novels), is the first biography of this complex man to be written. It begins with the difficulties produced by his illegitimate birth, and then describes his patronage by Lord Palmerston and Charles Dickens, his colourful diplomatic career, and finally his blossoming as a successful writer in France in the 1870s.