The Foreign Office had a long tradition of regarding a
strong Russian Empire as ‘not in the British interest,’ but John Bright saw only mutual benefit in it.
In 1877, John Bright told a meeting of the Manchester India Association that he had
wanted to put India on the path to independence nearly twenty years before.
When Malcolm III, King of Scots, met Princess Margaret of Wessex, he
knew at once that he had found a woman capable of setting an example to a whole nation.