Horace Walpole (1717-1797) was the youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole, Britain’s first Prime Minister. Educated at Eton and Cambridge (which he left without taking his degree), he made a two-year Grand Tour through France and Italy in the company of Thomas Gray. His father obtained for him a number of sinecures which gave him a comfortable income, and he was MP for thirteen years (1741-1754) for Callington in Cornwall, which he never visited, and later (1754-1757) for the rotten borough of Castle Rising in Norfolk and for King’s Lynn (1757-1768). He never held, or desired, ministerial office. He was an aesthete and a critic with a biting wit, but is best known for his Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), and for the construction of Strawberry Hill, his villa at Twickenham, which departed from the then-current classical style by incorporating Gothic features. He collected and edited for publication his voluminous correspondence.