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33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Weighty Book for a Weighty Subject, December 4, 2002
Given the somewhat mixed reviews on Amazon of Roy Jenkins's biography of William Gladstone, the towering giant of Victorian politics, I thought I would throw in my two cents on the matter. Jenkins is an interesting biographer, and even though he is not a professional, academic historian (so he does not always follow the standards of the historical craft), much of his work has received celebratory responses, including his earlier biography of Asquith and his more recent one of Churchill. As a long-serving Labour MP and a member of the House of Lords, Jenkins understand British politics from the inside out, and, as a result, he brings a unique perspective to his subjects. Jenkins also has a lovely, fluid writing style and a penchant for the telling quotation; his biographies read extremely well, and this biography of Gladstone is no exception. Jenkins also offers a point of view, although he does not do so explicitly. His interpretations of his historic subjects tend to be subtlely placed within the rolling prose of his books. But he does not interpret the way a typical historian would, and so his biographies have a different effect upon the reader. William Gladstone certainly requires a lengthy biography, and Jenkins gives him one. Gladstone was one of the premier figures of nineteenth-century British politics, four times prime minister, leading light of the Liberal party, defender of Christianity, and champion of the Irish. He transformed Victorian politics by taking issues to the masses and by bending policy and his party to his will. No prime minister during his long lifetime cut quite a historic and controversial figure, not even those who, in some ways, were better politicians, including Peel, Palmerston, and, above all, Russell (who truly deserves a great biography). No one, even Disraeli, seemed to dominate and define the age as much as Gladstone. But even then Gladstone was deeply flawed; his idiosyncratic, personalized Christianity and his pursuit of what were at the time questionable political policies alienated members of his party. And as right and humane as his demand for Irish Home Rule might have been, it was politically disastrous, dismembering the Liberal Party in 1886 and allowing room for the Conservative Party to acquire prominence, something it had not done for decades. Gladstone's budgets were legendary and perhaps his best accomplishments; his speeches were equally legendary as well, and his personal habits and adventures, in addition to his life in politics, make him undoubtedly one of the most fascinating subjects in British history. Jenkins's biography is certainly worthwhile as a life of Gladstone, and it leaves almost no stone unturned. Most of all, it truly conveys a direct sense of the grandness of its subject, even if, as some have pointed out here, it does not reveal enough of the individuals who surrounded Gladstone. Jenkins adequately covers Gladstone's early life and adventures, as well as his entry into politics, and then provides relatively substantial discussion of Gladstone's political activity in the middle and end of the century. As a "popular biography" (meaning not one written by a professionally-trained historian) Jenkins's Gladstone is the best available, even with its flaws. It is not, however, the only biography of the Grand Old Man. H.C.G. Matthew, who edited the Gladstone diaries, took all of the essays he wrote for the volumes of those diaries and compiled them in a single biography for Oxford University Press. It does not read as fluidly, but it is an excellent piece of work. Richard Shannon's two volume biography of Gladstone is longer than the one by Jenkins (it is too long) and benefits from a solid historian's lifetime of reflection. Many years ago, Peter Stansky wrote a small assessment of Gladstone called Gladstone: A Progress in Politics. And Eugenio Biagini has written a brief political biography for St. Martin's Press. It's the best small biography of Gladstone available. All of these works are by professional historians and provide some of the assessments and evaluations missing from Jenkins's biography. All in all, few in modern history, whether prime ministers or presidents, are as fruitful subjects for biography as Gladstone. He kept a diary for 70 years, lived for most of the nineteenth century, worked incessantly because of his hyperactivity, and transformed British politics. If you have any interest in British history, you would be doing yourself a disservice by not reading at least one biography of the Victorian statesman.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Enchanting - An absolutely exceptional book., April 22, 2003
Gladstone was a remarkable, complicated, even enigmatic man and Jenkins does not waste our time with the 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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16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not very revealing, October 18, 2002
This review is from: Gladstone (Hardcover)
One of the reviewers below, Donald Press, has expressed my views in clear terms so it was with some disappointment that I note that three of the first four readers of that review found it unhelpful. The fact is that Jenkins, who has a lively erudite writing style and who is very knowledgible about his subject, gives us little understanding of what kind man Gladstone was and, if anything, even less understanding of how Gladstone fit into his times. If you didn't know why Gladstone was important when you started the book, you will be no closer to understanding why when you finish. You will, however, know where he slept almost every night of his life, how long most of his major speeches were, how many trees he chopped down, and how many times he used particular symbols in his diary. I agree with the comment that this is good stuff for future researchers but for the general reader looking to understand Gladstone or to learn more about Victorian Great Britain, I found this book to be a disappointment.
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