Greville, Charles

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Greville, Charles (1794–1865). Greville's journal, kept from 1814 to 1860, is an invaluable source for the politics and society of his period. Originally published in part nine years after his death, his candid comments caused consternation and ‘social outrage’. Greville, a grandson of the duke of Portland, prime minister 1807–9, and of the 1st earl of Warwick, went to Eton and to Christ Church, Oxford. Two sinecures given to him as a boy provided for him and his passion was horse-racing. His entrée into high society, where he was known as ‘Punch’, gave him the chance to hear political and social gossip, but he wrote well and with some impartiality. His memoirs were published in full in 1938. Greville finished as a deaf bachelor with a reputation for testiness. Disraeli thought him the vainest man he had ever met, not excluding Bulwer-Lytton.

J. A. Cannon