He restored order to sectarian conflict in Syria, helped to keep Canada British, paved the way for the annexation of Egypt and prevented a world war breaking out with Russia on India’s North West Frontier. He was the trouble-shooter of choice for both parties at a time when in all other respects British politics could not have been more divided. 

Yet a figure that most Victorians would have recognised as one of the great men of their age has been written out of history. Uniquely for a diplomat Dufferin became a celebrity. ‘He is … the most popular man in Europe’, noted one contemporary in the 1880s, ‘But what a bore it must be, having to keep up such a reputation.’ And therein lay the rub. In straining to sustain it, he became trapped by his own inventions and thereafter lived his public life in fear of exposure. 

Ingenuity, ability, and charm usually saved the day, if only at the cost of raising the stakes still higher, until at the end catastrophe struck in the form of the greatest City scandal for forty years and the death of his heir in the Boer War. In this his life proved a morality tale for modern times.