Curzon of Kedleston
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
GEORGE NATHANIEL, EARL, a British statesman; born in Kedleston, England, in 1859. He was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1885 he was assistant private secetary to the Marquis of Salisbury; in 1891 and 1892, Under-Secretary of State for India; and from 1895 to 1898, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. From 1899 to 1905 he was Viceroy Viceroy and Governor-General of India. He represented the Southport division of southwest Lancashire in Parliament, from 1886 to 1898. In 1908 he was Irish Representative Peer, and since 1916 Leader of the House of Lords. In 1915- 1916 he was Lord Privy Seal; in 1916 President of the Air Board, later in that year becoming Lord President of the Council, and also member of the Imperial War Cabinet. In 1920 he was Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. In 1895 he married Mary Victoria, daughter of L. Z. Leiter, Washington, D. C., who died in 1906. He traveled extensively in central Asia, Persia, Afghanistan, Siam, Indo-China, and Korea, and received in 1895 the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, of which society he was president from 1911 to 1914. Among the many other honors which have been bestowed upon him were a fellowship in the British Academy (1908); a fellowship in All Souls' College, Oxford (1883); honorary degrees 1 from the universities of Oxford (1904), Cambridge (1907), Manchester (1908), American ethnologist; born in Northeast, 1913). Pa., July 22, 1857. At first a farmer boy, Glasgow (1911), and Durham ( he became interested in Indian relics, and He was also made Romanes Lecturer at Oxford University in 1907, Lord Rector of Glasgow University in 1908, Honorary Fellow Balliol College 1907, Rede EARL CURZON Lecturer of Cambridge University in 1913, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports 1904 to 1905, and Trustee of the National Gallery in 1911. He wrote "Russia in Central Asia" (1889); "Persia and the Persian Question" (1892); "Problems of the Far East" (1894); "Lord Curzon in India" (1906); "Principles and Methods of University Reform" (1909); "Modern Parliamentary Eloquence" (1913); "War Poems and Other Translations" (1915); "Subjects of the Day" (1915); etc.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921, Curzon was Foreign Secretary and near the summit of British politics; the entry stops just before its subject's decisive final act. In May 1923, on Bonar Law's resignation, the premiership went instead to Stanley Baldwin, partly because a Prime Minister in the House of Lords was thought unworkable — a disappointment Curzon never recovered from. He was made a marquess in 1921, left the Foreign Office in 1924 and died on 20 March 1925, so the list of offices here is nearly complete. His most durable legacy is not in the bibliography above but the "Curzon Line" he proposed in 1920, which after 1945 became substantially Poland's eastern frontier; Kedleston Hall itself passed to the National Trust in 1987.
Written for this edition, 2026.