Description

John Cam Hobhouse, Baron Broughton (1786-1869), politician and prolific memoirist, is today best remembered for his close friendship with Lord Byron, and as the inventor of the phrase 'His Majesty's Opposition'. He travelled extensively in Europe with Byron, and acted both as his best man and as his executor after Byron's early death in 1824. He began his political career as a radical, but gradually moved to a much more conservative viewpoint. This six-volume work is a revision of his 1865 privately printed memoir, Some Account of a Long Life, expanded by his daughter Lady Dorchester with severely edited entries from his diary and extracts from his other writings, and published between 1909 and 1911. The first two volumes are largely about Byron. The remainder relate to his political career and social contacts as a member of several Whig governments, and shed fascinating light on the period.