The British Liberal Party, and its successor, the Liberal Democrats, has a good claim to be the oldest political party in the world. From the Whigs of 1679 to the formation of the Liberal Party in 1859, and then to 1988 and the merger with the Social Democratic Party to form today's Liberal Democrats, politicians of all these labels held to a core of liberal principles: the belief in individual liberty; the quest for an equitable society at home and abroad; and the pursuit of reform, in the economic and social spheres as well as the political, with the aim of enlarging freedom for all. This book is the story of those parties' leaders, from Earl Grey, who led the Whigs through the Great Reform Act of 1832, to Nick Clegg, the first Liberal leader to enter government for more than 60 years.