Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons Quotes
Americans are either wild or dull.
1st Viscount Lyons
Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons, 1817—1887, , British Ambassador to the United States, British Ambassador to France, Quoted in Geoffrey Madan's Notebooks, Oxford University Press
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It was in the midst of the First World War. The king was not very charismatic and the “alien” criticism referred to the extensive intermarriage between the British royal family and the royalty of Europe—especially Germany. Although the defense was witty, the royal family actually changed the official family name to the one we know today and most do not realize that it was newly adopted to solve this problem of perceived alien influences: The House of Windsor.
Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons, 1st Earl Lyons GCB, GCMG, PC was an eminent British diplomat, the favourite of Queen Victoria. Lyons was the most influential British diplomat during each of the four great crises of the second half of the 19th century: Italian unification; the American Civil War; the Eastern Question; and the replacement of France by Germany as the dominant Continental power subsequent to German Unification. Lyons is best known for solving the Trent Affair during the American Civil War; for laying the foundations for the Special Relationship and the Entente Cordiale; and for predicting, 32 years before World War I, the occurrence of an imperial war between France and Germany that would destroy Britain's international dominance.
