{"product_id":"9780141991474-statesman-of-europe","title":"Statesman of Europe","description":"\u003cmeta content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\" http-equiv=\"Content-Type\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003eA Life of Sir Edward Grey\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e'The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our life-time.' The words of Sir Edward Grey, looking out from the windows of the Foreign Office at the end of August 1914, are amongst the most famous in European history, and encapsulate the impending end of the nineteenth-century world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe man who spoke them was Britain's longest-ever serving Foreign Secretary (in a single span of office) and one of the great figures of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. \u003ci\u003eStatesman of Europe\u003c\/i\u003e describes the three decades before the First World War through the prism of his biography, which is based almost entirely on archival sources and presents a detailed account of the main domestic and international events, and of the main personalities of the era. In particular, it presents a fresh understanding of the approach to war in the years and months before its outbreak, and Grey's role in the unfolding of events.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYet Grey's life was not all public affairs, momentous as those were. He disliked being in London, much preferring country life at Fallodon, his family estate in Northumberland, and displayed none of the ambition of his contemporaries (or successors). He attended assiduously to his duties as director of the Great North Eastern Railway, one of the transformative enterprises in industry and communications of the period, and wanted to spend as much time as he could fishing. Apart from his memoirs, the only book he wrote was called \u003ci\u003eThe Charm of Birds\u003c\/i\u003e. This hinterland gave quality to his judgements, and made his character attractive to his contemporaries.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis important book is the definitive biography of one of the pivotal figures in European diplomacy, and a magnificent portrait of an age.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rarewaves","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40779209637985,"sku":"9780141991474","price":20.51,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0092\/7504\/8033\/files\/stand_32408998.jpg?v=1737274640","url":"https:\/\/www.rarewaves.com\/products\/9780141991474-statesman-of-europe","provider":"Rarewaves.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}