Joe Chamberlain; Arthur James Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour

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A rare and informal view of two great statesmen, lounging back on one of the green front benches in the House of Commons, evidently taking part in a debate. Chamberlain, formidable political boss of Birmingham, had deserted the Liberal Party over the issue of Irish Home Rule. He joined Lord Salisbury's third administration in 1895 as Secretary of State for the Colonies. The intellectual Balfour, Salisbury's nephew, and leader of the Tories in the House of Commons, succeeded his uncle as Prime Minister in 1902.

Events of 1895back to top

Current affairs

Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest is first performed, the same year that he is imprisoned for homosexual offences following accusations made against him by the eighth Marquess of Queensbury. Whilst in prison, Wilde wrote De Profundis, a letter addressed to his former lover, Queensbury's son Lord Alfred Douglas, attacking him for his role in Wilde's imprisonment.
Prime Minister Lord Rosebery resigns and is succeeded by Salisbury.

Art and science

The Lumiere brothers hold the first public screening of movies at Paris's Salon Indien du Grand Café, featuring ten short films recorded with Leon Bouly's cinematographe device, recognised as the birth of cinema as a commercial medium.
Henry Irving, the celebrated actor and theatre manager, becomes the first actor to receive a knighthood.

International

In South Africa, prompted by the growing unrest of unfranchised British immigrants (Uitlanders) drawn to the Transvaal by the discovery of gold, Rhodes and other members of the South African mining community begin to plot the republic's overthrow. As a result, the disastrous Jameson Raid takes place, carried out on Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic by Leander Starr Jameson and his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen: it fails to bring about an Uitlander uprising.

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