Disraeli (Reputations)

click here for more details, find new or used items	E.J. Feuchtwanger Our price £19.99 New from £15.54 Used from £5.49 Pages: 256 (Paperback) ISBN: 0340719109 Pub: Hodder Arnold Pub date: 2000-04-28 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 456941

Reader Reviews:

The master politician (1/2 people found this helpful)

The first book I read in this series was on Oliver Cromwell. There the book was dealing with a man whose reputation has always been a matter of controversy for he bestrides the history of his age like a colossus.

Disraeli is one of the two great Prime Minister's of the Victorian age but he is no Cromwell. If anything he remains in the shadow of his nemesis, Gladstone. As well as being of different parties, they were me of great contrasts in terms of origins as well as principles. This book is more of a short biography rather than an analysis of a controverted reputation.

Having read this biography,one may conclude that Dizzy's one guiding principle was his own career.He had been baptised in infancy but his adherance to Christianity seems to be one of convenience. If he had stayed with his origins he could not have been an MP let alone become PM. he had to fight anti-semitic prejudice so his rise is remarkable. He did not have the education or family finances of Gladstone. He did not have his passion for Christian faith either. His espousal of the low church and Evangelicals seems to be more an oppostion to Gladsone's Tractarianism more than principle. So in the rest of life, Dizzy seems the supreme political pragmatist, wheeling and dealing to keep solvent and rise up to the top of the slippery pole.

He started out as a novelist. As a writer he is certainly a better seller than the turgid and prolix Gladstone whose writng was theological rather than fiction. As a speaker he does not have the Grand Old Man's reputation but he was certainly a telling debater.

He married for money but enjoyed a happy union with a wife who could be embarrassing. He certainly had a happy relationship with his queen. Flattery he laid on with a trowel making her Empress of India.

A remarkable man. A great Victorian and perhaps the first really pragmatic politician.

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