Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke

Born in London in 1843, Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, 2nd Baronet, became one of the best-known Radical voices in British public life. He studied at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, traveled widely, and turned those journeys into writing, most notably Greater Britain, a work that helped build his reputation as an energetic observer of the English-speaking world.

Dilke entered Parliament as a Liberal and built a career as a forceful reformer. He served as Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and later as President of the Local Government Board, earning a reputation for being informed, ambitious, and deeply involved in the politics of imperial Britain, democratic reform, and local government.

At the height of his career, however, he was drawn into a sensational divorce case that badly damaged his public standing and ended any real chance of leading the country. Even so, he remained active as a writer and politician, and he is still remembered as a striking figure of late Victorian politics: gifted, controversial, and impossible to ignore.