Richard Bickerton Pemell Lyons, 1st Earl Lyons was a British diplomat, who was the favourite diplomat of Queen Victoria, during 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 following the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. Lyons resolved the Trent Affair during the American Civil War; and contributed to the Special Relationship and to the Entente Cordiale; and for predicting, 32 years before World War I, the occurrence of an imperial war between France and Germany that was to destroy Britain's international dominance.

Sir Michael Henry Herbert,, was a British diplomat and ambassador.