Description:
This book provides the first biographical study of Charles Pelham Villiers (1802-1898), whose long UK parliamentary career spanned numerous government administrations under twenty different prime ministers. Villiers played a pre-eminent role in the Anti-Corn Law League as its parliamentary champion, introduced an important series of Poor Law reforms and later split with William Gladstone over the issue of Irish Home Rule, turning thereafter to Liberal Unionism. Hence Villiers, who remains the longest-serving MP in British parliamentary history, was intimately involved with many of the great issues of the Victorian Age in Britain.