In this post Michael Taylor introduces his new volume in the Royal Historical Society’s Camden Series, The Papers of Admiral George Grey, published in June 2025.
The volume presents the memoir, journal, and correspondence of George Grey (1809-1891), son of the Whig prime minister Earl Grey.
It documents the Grey family’s experience of the Whig ministry of 1830–1834, and George Grey’s own naval career which took him from the Battle of Navarino during the Greek War of Independence, to a decisive survey of the Falkland Islands, and then to the capital cities of South America during their pivotal early decades of independence.
In doing so, Michael’s volume sheds new light on the political, diplomatic, naval, and imperial histories of the early and mid-nineteenth century.
The full text of The Papers of Admiral George Grey is now available Open Access via Cambridge University Press, following a subvention by the Royal Historical Society.
About 30 miles from Limoges, half-way between the communes of Lesterps and Brillac, a path rolls up between meadows and trees to the gate of a house. Five dogs greet every visitor, and the same number of horses—some Arabian, some French trotters —patrol the acreage. In the spring, swallows nest in the beams of the kitchen ceiling, and from a distance a cat keeps an eye on them all, especially the young swallows.
This is La Brousse, a sixteenth-century farmhouse whose aged stonework offers shelter from the heat of the Limousine summer. It is the home of Gay Preston and a bolthole for her brother Anthony; it is through Anthony’s son, the novelist Alex Preston, my teammate in the Authors Cricket Club, that I have made their acquaintance.
The Prestons belong to the ancient house of Grey and a family tree in the bureau of La Brousse’s drawing room reaches back into the Frankish kingdoms of the sixth century. Much, therefore, has been written about their extended family—about politicians, diplomats, soldiers, and short-lived monarchs of dubious legitimacy—but not about the author of the nineteenth-century papers that have been kept at La Brousse.
These are the work of George Grey (1809-1891), the fifth son of the prime minister the Earl Grey, from whom the Prestons descend directly. This Grey spent the best part of his life in the Royal Navy. His writing—now published in my new Camden Series volume, The Papers of Admiral George Grey—describe a life of high politics, family strife, international conflict, and exploration; altogether, they narrate a story of almost picaresque adventure.
First, there is a memoir of his childhood and early naval career, from his education at Richmond School through his service on HMS Talbot during the Greek war of Independence and at the decisive Battle of Navarino, then ferrying British diplomats and governors around the world on the Windsor Castle and the Scylla. Grey wrote this memoir in retirement between 1870 and 1878.
[Grey’s] survey of the Falkland Islands … played a key role in the British decision to colonise the island.
Second, there is a journal of Grey’s command of HMS Cleopatra between 1835 and 1838. Grey wrote this contemporaneously in the form of letters never sent and he describes two voyages to St Petersburg, his survey of the Falkland Islands—which played a key role in the British decision to colonise the islands—ports of call along the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines of South America, and the volatile political affairs of the republics which had emerged from the collapse of the Spanish Empire.
The entry in Grey’s journal which begins his account of the Falklands Islands.
Third, there is a diary to which Grey contributes sporadically from 1841 to 1891. Finally, there are two folders of letters between Grey and his family, almost all from the period 1826 to 1855, and many of which are written by Grey’s mother, Mary Elizabeth, the wife of the second earl. It appears that a copy of only one of these letters is in the Earl Grey Family Papers in the Special Collection at Durham University Archives, and so this volume presents them to the public for the first time.
It is my hope that, through this volume, historians will be able to use Grey’s papers to shed additional light on several aspects of nineteenth-century history. With regard to high politics, for instance, these papers demonstrate just how resentful the Greys remained towards later Whig leaders, not least Melbourne and Palmerston.
Grey’s remarks on the Brazilian slave trade provide a piercing illustration of the frustration that anti-slavery campaigners felt at the limited progress of abolition in the wider Atlantic.
On imperial and diplomatic affairs, Grey’s remarks on the Brazilian slave trade provide a piercing illustration of the frustration that anti-slavery campaigners felt at the limited progress of abolition in the wider Atlantic, while his accounts of current affairs and the recent history of the new Latin American republics represent some of the earliest Anglophone reports from the former Spanish Empire.
Extract from George Grey’s letter to Earl Grey, from Rio de Janeiro, 24 February 1837.
As for naval history—and in respect of which I am deeply grateful for Andrew Lambert’s expert peer review of the manuscript—Grey’s journal emphasises not only how peaceful the Pax Britannica could be, but also the critical political function that naval officers played in the places beyond the regular reach of the Foreign Office. There is also Grey’s breathless, almost unpunctuated first-hand account of the action at the Battle of Navarino, and his considered analysis of increasing professionalism in the service.
I hope that this book will figure as a monument of sorts to family history, and to the care that some people have taken to preserve and curate the documents that have come down to them over the generations.
More than that, however, I hope that this book will figure as a monument of sorts to family history, and to the care that some people have taken to preserve and curate the documents that have come down to them over the generations. To that end, to give some colour on the life of Admiral Grey, and to explain some more of the genesis of this book, I will defer to Anthony Preston:
I grew up with Admiral George Grey’s great love Cleopatra ever present in my life. Not the famed Egyptian queen, but HMS Cleopatra, his ship. Admiral Grey was my great-great-grandfather, and through the diaries, letters, and journals he left behind, I formed an unexpected but intimate bond with this complex, curmudgeonly and sensitive ancestor. His writings, nearly lost to history, illuminate a man and his era with extraordinary vividness. They have become a treasured presence, guiding me to a deeper understanding not just of him, but of history.
My first glimpse of Admiral Grey came through a grand portrait in the dining room at Greys, the family home in Radlett where I was born in 1937. The Admiral’s imposing painting was stern yet intriguing, hinting at stories waiting patiently to be told. Beneath this portrait’s watchful gaze lived my grandmother, Sybil Frances Grey – affectionately known as Ninny – whose curiosity and meticulous marginal notes adorned countless books. Cultured and gentle, Ninny was as much mother to me as my own, and it was through her careful guardianship that the Admiral’s writings survived, safely hidden at the family home, Il Frantoio, on the Ligurian coast.
Admiral The Honourable George Grey (1809–1891) was the son of Earl Grey, the Prime Minister celebrated for the landmark 1832 Reform Bill and the abolition of slavery in the British colonies.
The Admiral’s diaries nearly vanished forever. Late in life, struggling with failing health and the irritability common among elderly admirals, Grey had contemplated destroying his journals. His great-grandfather-in-law, Admiral Lord Rodney, had famously suffered from gout, and perhaps Grey’s own ailments contributed to his mood.
However, Ninny, having read and admired the manuscripts, decided that their remarkable historical significance outweighed Grey’s instructions to destroy them. She found solace in his enigmatic final note: ‘…I will let the book remain for those who come after me to read or destroy, or both.’
In the early 1970s, my younger sister Gay bravely took on the monumental task of deciphering the Admiral’s nearly illegible handwriting. Encouraged by our mother, Ursula Kent, who provided her with an Olivetti typewriter, Gay spent more than a year patiently transforming fragile, ink-blotted pages – many composed amidst the sway and toss of the open ocean – into readable typescript.
Her devotion ensured the Admiral’s voice was preserved. The RHS’s recent decision to publish these papers, edited and annotated by Michael Taylor, has meant that what might have remained private family relics have become a coherent historical narrative, elegantly bridging past and present without sacrificing authenticity.
Admiral Grey commanded HMS Cleopatra from 1835 to 1839, a period marking the transition from sailing ships to steam-powered vessels. His writings vividly portray a maritime world on the cusp of irrevocable change – a world filled with beauty, hardship, and deep melancholy.
Grey documented with rare eloquence the subtle grief felt by sailors watching their cherished traditions fade. His detailed observations, notably on the Falkland Islands, resonated powerfully during the Falklands War of 1982, when my mother shared relevant excerpts from his diaries with readers of The Observer.
Grey’s linguistic abilities – fluent French and impressive self-taught Spanish – allowed him to engage with Latin America during a time of political upheaval. His reflections on Mexico, Texas, Bolivia, Peru, and Chile offer candid, insightful first-hand accounts of significant historical events.
Personally, Admiral Grey emerges from his diaries as deeply human: irritable yet endearing, often plagued by hypochondria yet always perceptive, humorous, and deeply sensitive. Eventually, happiness came to him through marriage to Jane Stuart in Malta, a union that brought domestic tranquillity and the joy of raising eleven children.
For me, engaging with Admiral Grey’s writings has been transformative. Seated at my desk overlooking the North Sea at Aldeburgh, reading through my copies of them, I often find myself transported aboard HMS Cleopatra, hearing the creak of rigging, feeling the rhythm of waves beneath my imagined feet. Through his stories, Grey has profoundly enriched my understanding of history, family and the subtle interplay between past and present.
In sharing Admiral Grey’s diaries, I hope to honour his legacy and the extraordinary journey his writings have taken. They remind us that part of the story of history is the way that it is recorded, transmitted, cherished and preserved. And the way it lives on through those who encounter it, and are changed as a result.
Anthony and Gay Preston at La Brousse.
As Anthony notes, it was his sister Gay who first sought to transcribe Grey’s papers, with Anthony himself typing up much of Gay’s work.
And though, in preparing this volume, I returned to and worked directly with the original sources in that French farmhouse, I owe them both an immense debt of gratitude for their help in preparing the way.
About the author
Michael Taylor gained his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2015.
He is the author of The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery (2020), which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, and Impossible Monsters: How the Discovery of Dinosaurs Changed the World (2024), which was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize.
About this latest volume in the Camden Series
The Papers of Admiral George Grey, edited by Michael Taylor, is now available online and in print from Cambridge University Press. This volume is published fully Open Access, following a subvention by the Royal Historical Society.
Fellows and members of the Society may also order a print copy of the volume at the discounted prize of £16 per volume. To order a copy of the volume, please email administration@royalhistsoc.org, marking your email ‘Camden’.
The Society publishes new volumes in the Camden Series each year. Two further volumes will appear in 2025:The Holograph Letters of Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots (1489-1541), edited by Helen Newsome-Chandler (August 2025) and A Collector Collected: The Journals of William Upcott, 1803-1823, edited by Mark Philp, Aysuda Aykan and Curtis Leung (November 2025).
About the Camden Series
The Royal Historical Society’s Camden Series is one of the most prestigious and important collections of primary source material relating to British History, including the British empire and Britons’ influence overseas.
The Society (and its predecessor, the Camden Society) has since 1838 published scholarly editions of sources — making important, previously unpublished, texts available to researchers. Each volume is edited by a specialist historian who provides an expert introduction and commentary.
Today the Society publishes two new Camden volumes each year in association with Cambridge University Press. The complete Camden Series now comprises over 380 volumes of primary source material, ranging from the early medieval to late-twentieth century Britain.
