Spencer Walpole

Sir Spencer Walpole KCB, FBA (6 February 1839 – 7 July 1907) was an English historian and civil servant.

Background He came of the younger branch of the de facto first prime minister, Robert Walpole who revived the Whig Party, being a patrilineal descendant of one of his brothers, the 1st Baron Walpole of Wolterton. His father Spencer Horatio Walpole (1807–1898) was three times Home Secretary under the 14th Earl of Derby. Through his mother he was a grandson of Spencer Perceval, the Tory prime minister. In 1882 he was made lieutenant-governor of the Isle of Man, and from 1893 to 1899 he was secretary to the Post Office. In 1898 he was knighted. in five volumes, was carried down to 1858, and was continued in his History of Twenty-Five Years (4 vol. 1904).

Among his other publications come his lives of Spencer Perceval (1894) and Lord John Russell (1889), and a volume of valuable Studies in Biography (1906).

His name is commemorated in Walpole Park in Ealing, formerly the grounds of his family home Pitzhanger Manor, both of which were purchased by Ealing Council in 1899.