The article focuses on the confrontation between an anonymous publicist known to the general public as Junius and the Duke of Grafton, the prime minister of the United Kingdom. The confrontation started in November 1768 and finished in 1770. The anonymous writer Junius contributed his public letters to the Public Advertiser, a London newspaper which later, in 1772, published the letters and some answers of Junius’ opponents in the Letters of Junius: Stat Nominis Umbra. The book, which contains valuable historical information, remains untranslated into Russian. Its allegorical and figurative language makes the book highly difficult to translate. Moreover, it is exceptionally difficult to render in translation the intricacies of the historical background, namely of the political crisis Britain was involved in at the turn of the 1760s-1770s. The article analyzes the letters of Junius to reconstruct the cabinet composition and the circumstances of the Duke of Grafton’s rise to power. The analysis shows that the Grafton ministry failed to solve two crucial problems of the time, namely the Wilkes case and the crisis in Britain’s North American colonies. The turning point in Junius’ career was his letter XXXV, in which he addressed the prime minister himself and sought to impose his advice on the 3rdDuke of Grafton. After that in January 1770, the Duke of Grafton resigned from his post recognizing defeat from his major political adversary.