Lord Palmerston, west front, Broadlands, probably 1850s
This albumen print shows Lord Palmerston as an elder statesman, at Broadlands. His papers comprise approximately 40,000 items of correspondence, of which three-quarters come from his period as Foreign Secretary, principally his private correspondence with British diplomats around the globe. This private correspondence is of a wholly different character to the formal communications contained in the official despatches, and it provided the Foreign Secretary with a unique insight into the business of foreign powers — which would never have been communicated to him officially. The archive comes from what is probably the high point of government by correspondence.
