author
Earl of David Lindsay Crawford
1871–1940
A statesman, art lover, and serious book collector, this Scottish peer moved easily between politics, scholarship, and the world of rare libraries. He wrote on Renaissance art and left behind journals that offer a vivid look at public life in Britain before and after the First World War.
1 Audiobook
Donatello, by Lord Balcarres
by Earl of David Lindsay Crawford
About the author
Born in 1871, he became David Alexander Edward Lindsay, 27th Earl of Crawford and 10th Earl of Balcarres. He was a British Conservative politician who served in senior public roles, including work connected with agriculture and with the Admiralty, and he was later elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Alongside politics, he was deeply involved in the arts and in the history of books. He wrote studies such as Donatello and The Evolution of Italian Sculpture, and he was known as a thoughtful supporter of museums, libraries, and scholarly institutions.
He is also remembered for the remarkable Crawford Library, one of the great private collections of books on bibliography and the history of printing. His journals, published after his death in 1940, remain valuable to readers interested in culture, politics, and intellectual life in late Victorian and early twentieth-century Britain.