Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons Biography

Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons, 1st Earl Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons, 2nd Baron Lyons, 2nd Baronet, of Christchurch GCB, GCMG, PC (26 April 1817 – 5 December 1887) was an eminent British diplomat, the favourite of Queen Victoria. Lyons was an imperative element of British diplomacy during each of the four great crises of the second half of the 19th century: Italian unification, the American Civil War, the decline of the Ottoman Empire, and the replacement of France, by the unified Germany, as the dominant Continental power. He is best known for solving the Trent Affair during the American Civil War, for laying the foundations for the Special Relationship, and for predicting, 32 years before World War One, the occurrence of an imperial war between France and Germany that would destroy Britain’s international dominance.