pp xi131 1989 hardback
0-7083-1044-3
This is an all-round portrait of arguably the greatest prime minister and chancellor of the exchequer of the nineteenth century. It condenses into four chapters the exceptional political career and reading and thinking life of a statesman who lived through nearly all the nineteenth century, took part in all its political, economic, religious and literary controversies and decisively affected many of them. Something is said of Gladstone's literary career and contribution to Homeric scholarship as well as other non-political facets of this many-sided man. The author argues with no previous writer but attempts to build on their work and incorporate their conclusions, relating them to her own research. It owes most to the published Diaries and Colin Matthew's introduction to them.
`If you have students studying Gladstone for A level, or even for GCSE, then this is the book for them. It is straightforward, short and eminently readable...Agatha Ramm is to be congratulated on synthesizing the plethora of Gladstonian research into such a cocise volume.' (Teaching History)