From the age of Pitt to the age of Peel, Canning towered above any rival in the House of Commons both as an orator and as an debater. At the Board of Control and at the Foreign Office he proved himself an immensely capable Departmental Minister. He was, on any showing, one of the best Foreign Secretaries England has ever had. His time as prime minister was cut short by death too soon for any judgment of his performance to be possible, but he remains one of the mot striking and certainly one of the most striking and certainly one of the most attractive politician of a momentous period.

Indeed, as Wendy Hinde shows in this scholarly and eminently fair study, the puzzle of his career is not why it was so brilliant but why it was not more so. Besides his own gifts, he was particularly distinguished by the favour of Pitt and later became a close friend of Lord Liverpool, the prime minister who enjoyed fifteen years of uninterrupted power. Yet too often he himself damaged his chances and defaced the impression he made on the world/ Loved by his friends, hated by his enemies, he never elicited a neutral reaction. He could hold men spellbound with his eloquence but offend them mortally by his mockery. No Tory government wanted to be without his active support; but too many of his colleagues mistrusted him. His ambition was limitless; but he could jeopardise his career from a quixotic sense of loyalty and obligation, first as a young nan to Pitt and later, in middle age, to Queen Caroline. He could also, with most of the trumps in his hand, throw away the game by overplaying it. There was in him, as in Sir Winston Churchill, a streak of rashness that would have ruined anyone of less transcendent gifts.

He had other obstacles to overcome besides those he erected for himself. His father died too soon for his son to have any recollection of him. His mother, to make ends meet, embraced a stage career that proved both precarious and disreputable. His guardian forbade him to see her during his time at Eton. Even when he became his own master he had to accept her exclusion from any contact with the world in which he was making his way as a politician. All this, and his own ideally happy marriage, tried though it was by the cruel affliction and early death of their adored eldest son, is brought out in a portrait that never loses sight of the man in the mazes of political manoeuvre.