Richard Luckett

Who was George Canning? (1973)

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Until Liz Truss, George Canning was the shortest-serving prime minister. He needn’t be forgotten by pub quizzers, general knowledge collectors and historians alike. In 1973, Richard Luckett reviewed a major biography of Canning’s life for The Spectator.

Every schoolboy knows about the duel with Castlereagh; students of that neglected subject, abusive language, remember Brougham’s description of his behaviour over the Catholic question (‘the most incredible specimen of monstrous truckling for the purpose of obtaining office which the whole history of political tergiversation could furnish’); historians recall his reputation as an orator, his part in the decision to bombard Copenhagen, his divisive effect on Tory ministries, his forceful conduct of foreign policy and the trouble caused by his early death after only a few months as Prime Minister. Anyone with a serious interest in the earlier nineteenth century knows, of necessity, a good deal more than this, but it is certainly true that Canning’s career has neither been greatly studied nor greatly appreciated.

Part of the reason is to be found in a certain ambivalence in the man himself. The duel with Castlereagh illustrates this clearly enough; when he came to take his place his second cocked his weapon for him, saying: ‘I cannot trust him to do it himself; he has never fired a pistol in his life.’ Afterwards Canning, wounded, wrote to friends that if they wanted to get a ball through the fleshy part of the thigh, ‘I would recommend Lord Castlereagh as the operator.’ The whole incident — two of the King’s ministers in a duel — which promises so well as material for the historical novelist is rendered slightly absurd and at the same time almost innocuous; it does not even become farcical. 

Canning’s courage is evident, but what is equally apparent is his refusal to indulge in heroics; consequently the incident is defused of both its tragic and its comic potential.

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