Richard Lyons, 1st Viscount Lyons

Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons, 1st Earl Lyons was an eminent British diplomat, the favourite of Queen Victoria. Lyons was the most influential British diplomat during each of the four great crises of the second half of the 19th century: Italian unification; the American Civil War; the Eastern Question; and the replacement of France by Germany as the dominant Continental power subsequent to German Unification. Lyons is best known for solving the Trent Affair during the American Civil War; for laying the foundations for the Special Relationship and the Entente Cordiale; and for predicting, 32 years before World War I, the occurrence of an imperial war between France and Germany that would destroy Britain's international dominance.