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Editorial Review Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of Churchill, a towering historical biography, available for the first time in paperback.
William Gladstone was, with Tennyson, Newman, Dickens, Carlyle, and Darwin, one of the stars of nineteenth-century British life. He spent sixty-three of his eighty-nine years in the House of Commons and was prime minister four times, a unique accomplishment. From his critical role in the formation of the Liberal Party to his preoccupation with the cause of Irish Home Rule, he was a commanding politician and statesman nonpareil. But Gladstone the man was much more: a classical scholar, a wide-ranging author, a vociferous participant in all the great theological debates of the day, a voracious reader, and an avid walker who chopped down trees for recreation. He was also a man obsessed with the idea of his own sinfulness, prone to self-flagellation and persistent in the practice of accosting prostitutes on the street and attempting to persuade them of the errors of their ways. This full and deep portrait of a complicated man offers a sweeping picture of a tumultuous century in British history, and is also a brilliant example of the biographer’s art.
From the Trade Paperback edition. ... Read more Customer Reviews (19) 
Too Tedious To Read
I bought this 600+ page tome because I wanted to learn more about 19th century English history.I knew virtually nothing about Gladstone, and I was convinced by the cover that claims this to be "[an] enthralling biography ... utterly absorbing" [an exact quote] according to "The Atlantic Monthly."
But as noted by other reviewers, this book dwells only on minutiae without (before I gave up at around page 60) providing any memorable insights into anything.It is possible that I can't "get it" because I'm an American without a grounding in the basics of English politics and English history -- exactly who are the Whigs, who are the Tories,Palmerston, that sort of thing -- but I think this book's problems are deeper than that.
For instance, we learn on page 57 that Gladstone's sister-in-law married "George Lyttelton, of Hagley Hall, who had succeeded as the fourth Lord Lyttelton of the second creation in 1837" and that his later achievements included "honorary degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge" and becoming "the first principal of Queen's College, Birmingham."But a few pages later, where we find Gladstone giving an important speech in the Commons concerning his opposition to the Opium Wars, we are told absolutely nothing about the Opium Wars, etc.
I know quite a bit about American history, but when reading a biography of Andrew Jackson, I doubt I would be very interested in learning about the comings and goings of the second cousins of members of his administration.
The Architect of the "Pax Victoria"
William Gladstone is probably the most recognized name in British life and politics during the period known as the Victorian era. His public life ran nearly concurrently with Queen Victoria's reign, usually not to his comfort or benefit, but his influence in government and public life was both an embodiment of the Victorian Age and at times a check upon its excesses.
I spent a fair amount of time wondering if the United States had ever produced someone even remotely similar to Gladstone, and I have still come up empty. Gladstone entered Parliament in 1833 and gave his last address in 1894. Despite youthful political indiscretions, an early tendency toward controversial outspokenness in matters theological, religious eccentricities, a tendency toward micromanagement, a temperamental sovereign, and a mixed record as four-time prime minister, Gladstone navigated sixty-some years of public service in a fashion that earned him the universal title Grand Old Man. The Gladstone portrayed by Jenkins becomes a character greater than the sum of his parts, certainly at least as responsible for the Pax Victoria as Victoria herself, whose vanities of empire were stoked, unwisely as it proved, by Gladstone's lifelong rival, Disraeli.
The young Gladstone fancied himself a theologian, and as a young MP produced a lengthy and polemical defense of the Anglican Church that fortuitously came to be forgotten in succeeding years. He never lost interest in theology, however, nor in the health of the established Anglican Church. The conversion of his friends Newman and Manning to Roman Catholicism troubled him, but the experience perhaps ameliorated a residual dogmatism to the point where he could converse with such as Charles Darwin in the latter's home. Religion would always be a major drive in Gladstone's life, but one of his religious practices has drawn particular interest over the years.
Gladstone, during the first half of his life, believed he was called to rescue prostitutes from a life of sin. Jenkins is careful here to walk a thin line in his assessment of Gladstone's "ministry." He [Jenkins] concludes that while Gladstone probably did believe his work was religious, he did find erotic stimulation in visiting such women in their places of residence, but apparently without technical marital infidelity. Gladstone himself would admit later that he succeeded in converting perhaps one of the ninety or so women he frequented; his diary indicates that such activity caused him enough moral discomfort that he engaged in frequent self-flagellation.
Fortunately for Gladstone, it was his legislative, oratorical, and administrative competence that shaped his public image. Somewhat like Churchill, he served in a number of government capacities, but clearly he was best suited as Chancellor of the Exchequer. American government does not have an equivalent officer who in effect draws up the nation's budget and establishes spending and taxing priorities for Parliament to vote up or down. Gladstone was a Conservative of a curious sort by today's standards: he eschewed deficit spending but did not shrink from raising taxes for what Henry Clay would have called "internal improvements." His policies over the years were generally good for the economy, and as Prime Minister for four separate tenures he enjoyed popularity among the laboring classes. In his later years Gladstone took to campaigning for elections and causes, attracting large and generally friendly crowds. This was an innovation in British politics, and Victoria thought it pedestrian.
Four times during his career Gladstone was summoned by the Queen to form new governments. Relations between the two were never warm, particularly after the death of Prince Albert. Gladstone, unlike many in government, became more liberal in old age. He was never entirely at peace with jingoistic rhetoric of empire [which Disraeli, according to Jenkins, spoon-fed the Queen to saturation], and his major political crucible was a morally equitable settlement of the Irish dilemma, a dream which regrettably escaped him and crippled his governments. Victoria, with a near neurotic fear of anarchy, found Gladstone's popularity unsettling and his politics too radical.
Gladstone, on the other hand, took advantage of the rapidly expanding railroad systems to observe first hand economic and political developments both in England and on the Continent. In some ways he shared Victoria's concern over nineteenth century upheavals and threats to legitimate and long established structures of authority, but his political instincts guided him toward moderate governance and a steady improvement in the standard of living. One may argue that Gladstone was also voted out of office four times, which is true; in his defense, his "social agenda" on such matters as Ireland and suffrage, modest as it was, ran against the tide of a reactionary monarch and the still well entrenched aristocracy of the House of Lords.
Gladstone's foreign policy was generally benign, a case of his being lucky and good. He was a Confederate sympathizer during the Civil War, but he did not object to American damage claims involving the Confederate warship Alabama, outfitted in England. His one major adventure was an incursion into Egypt in 1882 to stem nationalist unrest. Gladstone, then old and distracted, was not enthused by the cause but won pundits when the uprising was quelled with minimal loss of life.
Gladstone died in 1898 at the age of 89. Queen Victoria outlived him by about three years. Although a devotee of long walks, chopping trees, and frigid swimming outings, Gladstone's life was marred with illnesses and perhaps a tendency toward hypochondria. Certainly his very location in history is remarkable--a living bridge between Napoleon and Winston Churchill. Jenkins makes the most of this tenure in a very satisfying way for the reader. I would note here that an excellent sequel to this work is A.N. Wilson's "After the Victorians."
Very dry and narrow biography
This book on one of Britian's greatest prime ministers, especially of the 19th century proves to be very boring. I guess that is blunt enough. This is a political biography written by a politican turned historian. The narrow focus of this biography ensure that we know everything about Gladstone's political life and almost nothing outside of it. Subject matters that does not involved Gladstone, the author did not touch. We do not know what kind of Britain Gladstone presided over, what her foreign policies or even her domestic policies if Gladstone wasn't involved. How did Britain's imperialism, her many wars and its cost affected Gladstone? In all these 640 odds pages, we hardly know what kind of man Gladstone was outside of his political arena. His personal relationship with his family, friends, allies and enemies remains vague, superificial and smokey. What we get after reading this biography is a highly detail narrative of Gladstone's political accomplishments, failures, relationships and "what if" political scenarios. I guess if a politican writes about another politican, this is the type of biography you might get, an one dimensional look.
I didn't find the book very well written. It almost look like the author was overdosing on his thesaurus to impressed his English composition teacher. I found the Amazon.com review regarding that element to be very accurate.
Thus, I was bit surprised to read all these nice accolodes printed in the book. I wondered if any of these people actually read the book which can put almost anyone to sleep unless of course, if you are a politican.
I find it hard to recommend this book to anyone. Its definitely not for casual reading unless 19th century British parlimentary history is what you are looking for.
state versus church
William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), 4 times Prime Minister of Great Britain during the height of Britain's influence and imperial power, was an extraordinary leader and individual who repays close study. His life, like that of Queen Victoria herself, spanned most of the 19th century. He was perhaps the most eminent of the British Victorians. One can compare him only to Darwin in the extent to which he influenced the culture and lives of his countrymen during that century. He was fourth son of Sir John Gladstone, a wealthy merchant in Liverpool who attained his riches at least partially via his holdings in the slave-worked Carribean cotton and sugar plantations. Like many of the sons of the rich in England during the early Victorian period, William was educated at Eton and Christ College, Oxford. It was at Oxford apparently where the future prime Minister awoke to his three greatest passions: religion, politics and Homer.
Gladstone's intellectual struggles with those three passions are very ably summarized in a coupl eof recent books on the man: Babbington's book on Gladstone's intellectual development and the biography here under review by Jenkins. It speaks well of Gladstone that he took seriously the question of how religion and politics, or church and state ought to be related both culturally and institutionally/legally. Gladstone really did grapple mightily with the issue and his labors did produce fruit it seems to me. In some ways Gladstone was the ideal man to pursue the question of Church and State. He was an able politician and administrator in a country where Church and State issues had been life or death matters for centuries. He was also a deeply religious man who read voraciously in theology and spirituality and who all his life engaged in regular prayer and ministry. On the other hand, though he was a very successful politician he was not a profound political thinker. He did not have the same deep grounding in either theology or in political philosophy that many of his contemporaries had. He knew enough, however, to know that he did not know and thus he very wisely sought counsel from the experts. Although he was an almost fanatical High Anglican churchman, he eagerly sought counsel from three Roman Catholics: the German theologian Dollinger, the convert John Henry Newman and the political historian Lord Acton. Three of these men, Gladstone, Acton and Dollinger, were lifelong friends who corresponded and met regularly over several decades. Newman corresponded with the 3 but was limited in his travel and meetings during to his clerical life and duties. Gladstone, Acton and Dollinger, nevertheless, held Newman in highest regard, though Gladstone always regretted Newman's conversion to Roman Catholicism.
Gladstone's position on Church-state relations evolved along with his political views over the many years he spent in public life. When he graduated from Oxford in 1832, his father convinced the Duke of Newcastle to sponsor his son for the Newark constituency and thus Gladstone entered politics in a fateful year for Britain and for Gladstone. In that year the great Reform Act of 1832 had been passed which substantially increased the franchise. Gladstone would be at the center of further increases in the franchise throughout the 19th century.
Gladstone distinguished himself with fine oratorical skills in his maiden speeches in parliament. He was very conservative and opposed the extension of the franchise and loosening up the tight Church-state relationship. He very quickly developed the view that the strength of a polity depended on the strength and respect given to the Church. His deep religious sense also allowed him to sometimes place the interests of the state in service to the interests of the Church. This makes sense if you view the interests of the population as the same as or coterminous with the interests of religion. If the people need religion in order to flourish then the job of the State is to protect and nurture religious institutions and power. To do so would be to increase the power of the people.
He parliamentary speeches got him noticed by Peel, the prime Minister, who appointed him to a post in the Treasury. He quickly evidenced unusual administrative ability and the following year he was promoted to under-secretary for the colonies. Before he could distinguish himself in this new post he lost office when Peel resigned in 1835. He reasonably quickly returned to the government, however, when the Whigs were forced out of power in 1841. He now began to display extraordinary political and administrative skills. In 1844 he put together the Railway Bill that obliged railway companies to transport third-class travelers for fares that did not exceed a penny a mile. This bill reduced the unpopularity of his party among ordinary Britons.
In1847 Gladstone was elected the conservative member of parliament (MP) for Oxford University. This is a significant fact as Oxford at that time was a bastion of High Church, conservative thought which held that the State ought to support, financially, legally and in general promote an established religion, namely the High Church form of Anglicanism. Gladstone believed that Anglicanism had discovered the right form of state-church relations with the two entities roughly co-equal influence in the larger culture and each competent in its own domain. The state could not and should not undertake any actions that would undermine the influence of the Church and vice versa. Gladstone opposed Roman Catholicism insofar as it yielded where religious questions were concerned to a power outside of the local nationality. He also opposed low church and protestant manifestations of religion in England as disordered in their relations to the state: either they were hostile to the state and too subservient to state powers (e.g. the Puritans under Cromwell). All his life Gladstone was quite critical, even fanatically so, of the Roman Catholic Papacy-this despite his intense and life-long friendships with devout Roman Catholics. His own sister had converted to Roman Catholicism. Yet he saw the papacy as illiberal and operating to instill superstious subservience in the life of the faithful. When the First Vatican Council created the dogma of papal infallibility Gladstone only felt confirmed in his estimate of the backwardness of the Papacy. He never learned to see that the Papacy represented a cultural force that could be appealed to over and beyond the state. It represented a check on state power... but Gladstone never understood that. Indeed, it is now generally believed by many competent historians that democracy emerged first in the West precisely because the Papacy always constituted an extra-local, extra-national, spiritual, legal and institutional authority that could trump the local sovereign in several important cultural and economic domains that affected the lives of ordinary people nominally under the jurisdiction of the local Sovereign. Such was not the case in the Eastern Orthodox tradition where Church (in the form of the Metropolitan and Patriarchate) was subordinated to the Emperor and Czar. Thus it is not Christianity per se that yields liberty and democracy but the Latin rite which does so.
When Lord Palmerston, the leader of the Whigs, became Prime Minister in1859, he made Gladstone the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Again Gladstone proved an extraordinarily able Administrator: He abolished the paper duty which enabled publishers to produce cheap newspapers. He, bucked the tide in his own party and supported another reform Bill which would have enfranchised large sections of the working class (but this was defeated). His support for reform cost him his seat as representative from Oxford University. He now moved away from the conservative party. Lord Russell, the new Prime Minister, asked Gladstone to become leader of the House of Commons as well as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Gladstone again introduced a reform bill and again was defeated and Russell's administration resigned.
Lord Derby, leader of the conservatives now became Prime Minister with the unscrupulous Benjamin Disraeli acting as leader of the House of Commons. To steal the thunder from Gladstone and the liberals, Disraeli proposed (in 1867) a new Reform (enfranchisement) Act. Unlike Disraeli himself who had earlier blocked Gladstone's efforts on the same measure, Gladstone took a principaled stand, pointed out that he had practically written the bill himself (Disraeli being too stupid to undertake the task), supported the bill and the measure was passed.
The new reform act gave the vote to every male adult householder living in a borough constituency, approximately1,500,000 new voters. Who would get the new voters? Interestingly, the new voters were not decieved by Disraeli's machinations. In the general election of December 1868, the conservatives were defeated and Gladstone, leader of the liberal party, became Prime Minister. Now Gladstone acted with astonishing energy. He wrote and passed the education act (1870) and quickly moved to consolidate his party's base by passing the Ballot Act (1872). This made voting anonymous. Until then voters had to mount a platform and announce their choice of candidate to the officer who then recorded it in the poll book. Employers and local landlords therefore knew how people voted and could punish them if they did not support their preferred candidate.
In the 1874 general election, however, the conservatives squeaked out a bare majority and Disraeli now became Prime Minister. Gladstone led the opposition. At this point he began his lifelong habit of intense scholarly and religious research when out of office. Amazingly enough in less than two years he wrote and published (all while leading the opposition in Parliament!) his book An Inquiry into the Time and Place of Homer in History (1876). It is difficult to describe the work as it contained some very big ideas (Greek culture as part of the Christian revelation-not merely foreshadowing the revelation) and some extraordinary minutiae only scholars could find interesting (e.g. an enumeration of styles, descriptions and functions of doorways in Homer...such info later helped helped anthropologists excavating ruins of Mycanae and Troy).
On a side note: While Disraeli gained the favor of Queen Victoria, Gladstone incurred her wrath. This it turns out was due to the fact that Gladstone was constantly trying to get her to play a role in the religious and political affairs of state (while Disraeli preferred a more tame royalty)-yet she would not budge from the Palaces after the death of Prince Albert. Disraeli's inactivity on the domestic front and bungling of foreign crises led to the dissolution of Parliament in 1880, and the general election resulted in a overwhelming Liberal victory and Gladstone's return to the Prime Minister-ship. Once again he acted energetically, introducing two new measures concerning parliamentary reform. The corrupt practices act reigned in some of the buying and selling of candidates and offices that proliferated under the Disraeli regime. The 1884 reform act gave the counties the same franchise as the boroughs and added about six million to the total number of new voters. Not surprisingly Gladstone and the liberals won the 1886 general election.
He now began another unpopular crusade: Gladstone now attempted to convince Parliament to accept Irish Home Rule. At this time the master Irish politician Parnell was using brilliant parliamentary tactics to bring the issue before Parliament. When Gladstone finally introduced a home rule bill the proposal split his own party and Parliament rejected the measure. He nevertheless tried again but this time Parnell became embroiled in a personal scandal (He had a mistress whom he apparently passionately loved and later married). Without Parnell's leadership in the House of Commons the bill suffered and again went down to defeat. Gladstone was defeated in the polls in the 1886 elections but was once again returned to office for the final time in 1892. He tried once more. The following year the Irish home rule bill was defeated in the house of lords. William Gladstone resigned from office in March 1894 and died at Hawarden on 19th May, 1898.
Enchanting - An absolutely exceptional book.
Gladstone was a remarkable, complicated, even enigmatic man and Jenkins does not waste our time withthe sort of pop-psychology projection and junk theories that ruin so much contemporary biography.Instead, Jenkins lets the facts speak for themselves, weighting them based on their demonstrable impact on Gladstone's own life and on British society viewed from the vantage point of 100 years or more of subsequent history.Gladstone emerges through records of his actions, the memoirs of his contemporaries, and his own diary.Jenkins resists the too-common modern conceit of pretending intimate knowledge of Gladstone as if through some astral mind-meld.Although he admits his own affection for the man, Jenkins lets readers decide for themselves what they think of this stubborn, courageous, long-winded, sanctimonious, and usually dead right -- even prophetic -- dynamo. Along the way there are delightful, balanced, spot-on portraits of some of Gladstone's contemporaries.The often-deified Disraeli comes out as a man of great talent, imagination, and political genius who was a self-absorbed, underhanded lightweight.(A portrayal such as that some modern critics have applied to Bill Clinton.)The slow intellectual and emotional curdling of Queen Victoria after the death of Prince Albert is as eloquent a meditation on the corruptions of isolation and power as I've read in some time.Spencer, Parnell, Hartington, Rosebery, Balfour, Joseph Chamberlain, Manning, Wilberforce, Palmerston -- all are here drawn with flavor and economy and no trace of bitterness or partisanship. One of the great strengths of this biography is that it never talks down to the reader. Jenkins is clearly an almost frighteningly literate individual, and his vocabulary occasionally sent me to the dictionary, but I consulted it in delight as every rare word was clearly used unselfconsciously by an author who knew it well and knew exactly what he was trying to say.(As Simon Winchester has noted, there are very few true synonyms in English.)More challenging in this regard may be the fact that the book, having been written for a British audience, assumes an elementary knowledge of the outlines of British history, which many American readers don't have.Just as a book about a prominent American nineteenth-century figure would not feel it necessary to produce extensive background on, say, the industrial revolution, the transcontinental railroad, or abolition, so Gladstone assumes the reader's familiarity with the Indian Raj, the expansion of the franchise, Britain's own industrial progress, and other subjects.My advice is to just jump right in anyway -- I myself was not well versed in these topics yet found the narrative so strong that the author's insights were easy to follow.
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