Lord Melbourne, 1779-1848

Melbourne's life story is simply amazing. From his outrageously popular mother (a Whig noblewoman whose multitude of sons each had different--perhaps royal--fathers) and crazily intense wife, Caroline Lamb (a woman who once bit a chunk out of a wine glass when she spied her lover speaking to another woman) to Melbourne's "sexual rivalry" with that poetical superstar of the nineteenth-century, Lord Byron ("mad, bad, and dangerous to know") to, yes, a political career that shone brightly on the world stage (the city of Melbourne, Australia is named for him) this man was the first Prime Minister of Victoria's long reign, and in some ways the one with whom she was closest. The tidbits of Melbourne's personal life and the (ahem) affairs of those around him are here in pleasing detail, but there is no skimping on his political career, or on the world of his times. I found this to be an enjoyable biography of a remarkable man who had the good fortune to dwell in an interesting period and know most of the great figures (of which he was certainly one) of his age.

Simply, I read this book because Dr. Mitchell's earlier book on Charles James Fox was so fascinating. While the personalities of the two great men must have made writng about Melbourne a bit harder to enliven, it is a fascinating biography of a man I previously knew very little about.