Disraeli: A Brief Life

Description

'There was', Gladstone declared in 1895, 'no life which required so much to be written as that of Disraeli.' Benjamin Disraeli was born in London in 1804, the grandson of an Italian Jew. In this fresh account of his life, Paul Smith looks at Disraeli's unique character as a fuse of Jewishness and Anglicanism, outsider and insider, nationalist and European, Romantic and Tory; and shows how this formed his 'appeal as an original and a card, the most piquant joker in the pack. His indomitable nerve, as a faintly raffish outsider, in scaling the highest peaks of public life, added spice ... to an increasingly unpopular government.'

'Paul Smith's new life of Disraeli is perfect ... It will entertain the general reader and prove invaluable to every History Sixth Form and college library.' History Today 'The great merit of Paul Smith's new brief study of Disraeli is that he interprets his subject as an artist who moulded both his identity and that of his political milieu until he could create a congenial political style ... enjoyable and highly intelligent.' London Review of Books 'He was without any rival whatever, the first comic genius whoever installed himself in Downing Street.' Michael Foot ' ... an excellent and enjoyable short biography of Disraeli. It is the mature work of an expert in the field, written succinctly and judiciously'. History