George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston

The Most Honourable The Marquess Curzon of Kedleston KG GCSI GCIE PC FRS FRGS FBA
Lord Curzon, as Viceroy of India
Leader of the House of Lords
In office 3 November 1924 – 20 March 1925
Monarch	George V
Prime Minister	Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	The Viscount Haldane
Succeeded by	The Marquess of Salisbury
In office 10 December 1916 – 22 January 1924
Monarch	George V
Prime Minister	David Lloyd George Bonar Law Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	The Marquess of Crewe
Succeeded by	The Viscount Haldane
Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
In office 23 October 1919 – 22 January 1924
Monarch	George V
Prime Minister	David Lloyd George Bonar Law Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	Arthur Balfour
Succeeded by	Ramsay MacDonald
Lord President of the Council
In office 3 November 1924 – 20 March 1925
Monarch	George V
Prime Minister	Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	Lord Parmoor
Succeeded by	The Earl of Balfour
In office 10 December 1916 – 23 October 1919
Monarch	George V
Prime Minister	David Lloyd George
Preceded by	The Marquess of Crewe
Succeeded by	Arthur Balfour
President of the Air Board
In office 15 May 1916 – 3 January 1917
Monarch	George V
Prime Minister	H. H. Asquith David Lloyd George
Preceded by	The Earl of Derby
Succeeded by	The Viscount Cowdray
Viceroy and Governor-General of India
In office 6 January 1899 – 18 November 1905
Monarchs	Victoria Edward VII
Deputy	Lord Ampthill
Preceded by	The Earl of Elgin
Succeeded by	The Earl of Minto
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
In office 20 June 1895 – 15 October 1898
Monarch	Victoria
Prime Minister	The Marquess of Salisbury
Preceded by	Sir Edward Grey
Succeeded by	St John Brodrick
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for India
In office 9 November 1891 – 11 August 1892
Monarch	Victoria
Prime Minister	The Marquess of Salisbury
Preceded by	Sir John Eldon Gorst
Succeeded by	George W. E. Russell
Member of the House of Lords
Lord Temporal
as an Irish representative peer 21 January 1908 – 20 March 1925
Preceded by	Lord Kilmaine
Succeeded by	The Baroness Ravensdale (in barony) The Viscount Scarsdale (in viscountcy)
Member of Parliament for Southport
In office 27 July 1886 – 24 August 1898
Preceded by	George Augustus Pilkington
Succeeded by	Herbert Naylor-Leyland
Personal details
Born	George Nathaniel Curzon (1859-01-11)11 January 1859 Kedleston, Derbyshire, England
Died	20 March 1925(1925-03-20) (aged 66) London, England
Political party	Conservative
Spouses	Mary Leiter ​ ​ (m. 1895; died 1906)​ Grace Duggan ​ ​ (m. 1917)​
Children	The Baroness Ravensdale Lady Cynthia Curzon Lady Alexandra Curzon
Parent	Lord Scarsdale (father)
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford

George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, KG, GCSI, GCIE, PC, FRS, FRGS, FBA (11 January 1859 – 20 March 1925), styled Lord Curzon of Kedleston between 1898 and 1911 and then Earl Curzon of Kedleston between 1911 and 1921, was a prominent British statesman, Conservative politician and writer who served as Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905.

Born in Derbyshire into an aristocratic family, Curzon was educated at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford, before entering Parliament in 1886. In the following years he travelled extensively in Russia, Central Asia and the Far East, and published several books on the region in which he detailed his geopolitical outlook and underlined the perceived Russian threat to British control of India. In 1891, Curzon was named Under-Secretary of State for India, and in 1899 he was appointed Viceroy of India. During his tenure, he pursued a number of reforms of the British administration, attempted to address the British maltreatment of Indians, undertook the restoration of the Taj Mahal, and sent a British expedition to Tibet to counter Russian ambitions. He also presided over the 1905 Partition of Bengal. Curzon later came into conflict with Lord Kitchener, Commander-in-Chief, India, over issues of military organisation. Unable to secure the backing of the government in London, he resigned later that year and returned to England.

In 1907, Curzon became Chancellor of Oxford University, and the following year he was elected to the House of Lords. During the First World War, he served in H. H. Asquith's coalition cabinet as Lord Privy Seal, and from late 1916 he was Leader of the House of Lords and served in the war cabinet of Prime Minister David Lloyd George and the War Policy Committee. He was appointed Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in October 1919 and lent his name to Britain's proposed Soviet-Polish boundary, the Curzon Line. He also oversaw the division of the British Mandate of Palestine and the creation of the Emirate of Transjordan, and was the chief Allied negotiator of the 1922 Treaty of Lausanne which defined the borders of modern Turkey. In 1921, he was created a marquess. On Bonar Law's retirement as Prime Minister in 1923, Curzon was a contender for the office but was passed over in favour of Stanley Baldwin. He remained as Foreign Secretary until 1924 when the Baldwin government fell, and died a year later at the age of 66.