Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons

British diplomat

Date of Birth: 06-Apr-1817

Place of Birth: Lymington, England, United Kingdom

Date of Death: 05-Dec-1887

Profession: diplomat

Zodiac Sign: Aries


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About Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons

  • Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons, 1st Earl Lyons (26 April 1817 – 5 December 1887) was an eminent British diplomat, the favourite of Queen Victoria.
  • Lyons was the most influential British diplomat during each of the four great crises of the second half of the 19th century: Italian unification; the American Civil War; the Eastern Question; and the replacement of France by Germany as the dominant Continental power subsequent to German Unification.
  • Lyons is best known for solving the Trent Affair during the American Civil War; for laying the foundations for the Special Relationship and the Entente Cordiale; and for predicting, 32 years before World War One, the occurrence of an imperial war between France and Germany that would destroy Britain's international dominance. He served as British Ambassador to the United States from 1858 to 1865, during the American Civil War; British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1865 to 1867; and British Ambassador to France from 1867 to 1887, which was then the most prestigious position in the Civil Service.
  • Famous for his tact, equability towards foreign peoples, staunchness, stoicism, and opulent dinner parties, Lyons was offered the Cabinet position of Foreign Secretary on three separate occasions, by three separate Prime Ministers (Gladstone, Disraeli, Salisbury) and encouraged to accept the post by Queen Victoria, but declined the offer on all three occasions.
  • Lyons was a Francophile, and, although he maintained nominal party neutrality, an advocate of the Tory Party and monarchist whose sympathies were closest to those of 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, his closest political ally. Lyons – who was distrusted by Gladstonian Liberals as a 'Tory-leaning diplomat' – founded the Tory-sympathetic 'Lyons School' of British diplomacy: which consisted of Sir Edwin Egerton; Sir Maurice de Bunsen; Sir Michael Herbert; Sir Edward Baldwin Malet; Sir Frank Lascelles; Sir Gerard Lowther; Sir Edmund Monson, 1st Baronet; and Sir Nicholas O'Conor.
  • Lyons's biographer Jenkins (2014), in the most recent biography of Lyons, considers him to be the exemplar of the British diplomat, of the ‘Foreign Office mind’, who created a canon of practical norms of British imperial diplomacy, including the necessity for neutrality in domestic party politics and the necessity for extensive confidential correspondence with various Cabinet ministers. Lyons was the eldest son of Edmund Lyons, 1st Baron Lyons; the cousin of Sir Algernon Lyons, Admiral of the Fleet and First and Principal Naval Aide-de-Camp to Queen Victoria; and the cousin of Richard Lyons Pearson, Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

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