Sir Spencer Walpole KCB, FBA (6 February 1839 – 7 July 1907) was an English historian and civil servant.

Spencer Walpole was educated at Eton, and from 1858 to 1867 was a clerk in the War Office, then becoming an inspector of fisheries.

[1] A most efficient public servant and in private life well-conversed, Walpole became a successfully published historian.

His family connections gave him a natural affinity for the study of public affairs, and their mingling of Whig and Tory policies of past and present contributed to a deliberately reasoned, judicious and balanced view of English political figures – he inclined, however, to the Whig or moderate Liberal side, including in his writing.

[1] Among his other publications come his lives of Spencer Perceval (1894) and Lord John Russell (1889), and a volume of valuable Studies in Biography (1906).