154. A great man falls, a lesser one fades
With both eyesight and hearing fading, Gladstone couldn’t last long after his defeat on Home Rule. Though he lasted as long as he could. Even after almost the entire cabinet prevented him from blockin...
6 Aug 202314min
153. Home Rule lost
The 1892 election had given Gladstone his chance to form yet another government and establish two new records: the only man to have been Prime Minister on four different occasions, and the oldest man ...
30 Juli 202314min
152. Swinging pendulum, new characters
The pendulum had been swinging fairly steadily over the twenty years up to the early 1890s, with any party that won an election generally losing the next. That happened again in 1892, although the win...
23 Juli 202314min
151. Ireland: the curtain falls
Just two weeks after the end of the divorce proceedings between Katharine and William O’Shea, the Irish Parliamentary Party assembled in Committee Room 15 of the Palace of Westminster, for the most fa...
16 Juli 202314min
150. Scramble for Africa
We break away in this episode from our account of events in Britain’s ever-troubled relationship with Ireland, to look instead at Africa, where things were about to get a lot worse even than they were...
9 Juli 202314min
149. The road to committee room 15
This episode picks up Ireland’s story again, just as the English establishment turned its guns on Charles Stewart Parnell. Round 1 of its attack was launched through the Times newspaper, in a series ...
2 Juli 202314min
148. Bloody Balfour
This episode looks at the strange behaviour of Captain William O’Shea, the husband of Katharine. She was in one of the great love relationships of their time, with Charles Stewart Parnell. O’Shea want...
25 Juni 202314min
147. Salisbury, man of his class
Before we return to the sorry tale of British rule in Ireland, this episode looks at some of the many other issues that Lord Salisbury addressed during his second ministry. What emerges is the portrai...
18 Juni 202314min
