Arthur Balfour’s baiting of W.E. Gladstone in the House of Commons may be what we most remember about how these two British Prime Ministers interacted. Gladstone, almost forty years older than Balfour, was the epitome of the passionately earnest Victorian statesman, while Balfour was among the first of a new type of modern British politician: suave and publicly reserved. How surprising that they frequently met socially, coming together in rollicking fun and music-making.
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