Augustine Birrell was born in Liverpool on 19 January 1850 to Charles Morton Birrell, a highly respected Baptist minister of Scottish birth, and Harriet Jane Grey Birrell. At sixteen, after a sound education at Dissenting schools, he was articled to a local solicitor. He was an avid reader, and took full advantage of the local resources for self-improvement, the Liverpool Lyceum and the Law Clerk's society. An unexpected legacy enabled him at nineteen to go to Cambridge where he read quietly and took a modest degree in law and modern history while concurrently taking an L.L.B. by correspondence from the University of London. He then settled back into law, to become a barrister in London and soon to achieve a reasonable income from routine litigation. Once established, in 1878 he duly married his boyhood love, Margaret Mirrlees, only to see her die in miscarriage a year later. He thereupon...