Thomas Henry Sanderson, 'Foreign Affairs'

Spy depicts Sir Thomas Henry Sanderson, KCB, KCMG — Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office — as a lean, slightly stooped figure in a dark frock coat and bow tie, pince-nez perched on his nose, a greying moustache adding a note of dry distinction. The caption 'Foreign Affairs' identifies his domain: Sanderson was the consummate career diplomat, the quiet machinery behind Lord Salisbury's foreign policy during Britain's late-imperial period. Ward's caricature exaggerates his angular thinness and the donnish eyewear, casting him as the embodiment of Whitehall discretion — formidable in expertise, invisible to the public. The comedy is entirely one of professional temperament.