George Lamb (politician)
The Hon. George Lamb was a British politician and writer.
The youngest son of Peniston Lamb, 1st Viscount Melbourne, and his wife Elizabeth, and the brother of William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne, Frederick Lamb, 3rd Viscount Melbourne, and Emily Lamb, Countess Cowper, he was educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated MA in 1805.
On 17 May 1809, he married Caroline Rosalie Adelaide St. Jules, the illegitimate daughter of William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire, by his mistress Lady Elizabeth Foster. In 1805 his brother William had married Caroline's cousin Lady Caroline Ponsonby, whose affair with the poet Lord Byron led her to describe him as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know".
The Lambs had no children and it was speculated that the marriage was never consummated.
He became a barrister at Lincoln's Inn, and was Member of Parliament for Westminster from March 1819 to March 1820, and for Dungarvan from 1822 until his death. He served in Earl Grey's administration as Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department from 1830 until his death.
His comic opera Whistle for it was produced in 1807, and his adaptations of Timon of Athens in 1816. His most important work, a translation of the poems of Catullus, was published in 1821.
