A Turkophile writer, Urquhart is best known for conducting an interminable vendetta against Lord Palmerston who had dismissed him from his diplomatic post in 1837. His allegations that Palmerston was a Russian agent had little credibility but he did occasionally secure a wider audience for his views from Radicals. He used his brief spell as MP for Stafford in the 1840s to continue his campaign against Palmerston, who thought his adversary ‘more than half mad, and wholly bad’.