William Pitt the Younger

William Pitt was born 28 May 1759, son of a prime minister, and became one himself in 1783 when George III was still king. He served as the last PM of Great Britain until the Acts of Union 1800 made him the first of the United Kingdom, left office in March 1801, then returned from 1804 until his death on 23 January 1806. His premierships were dominated by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars; he raised taxes to fund the fight, cracked down on radicalism, and engineered the Irish union to block French support - though his bid for Catholic emancipation failed. He called himself an independent Whig but built what became the new Toryism, a machine that held power for a generation. Historians mark him as solitary, colourless, superior in manner - yet William Wilberforce said he'd never known Pitt's equal for personal purity and love of country, and Lord Minto called him the Atlas of a reeling globe. He died in office, second-longest-serving PM after Walpole, having carried Britain from the old order to the new without violent upheaval.