Sir Robert Peel: A Biography
£9.73
Opens up the complexities of the time and brilliantly introduces a man of a great stature - I can remember at school feeling that history became far too complicated for mortal (and schoolboy minds) when it reached the early to middle of the Victorian era - one could more or less understand (if not necessarily approve of) the expansionist vision of a British globe - but mention things like the Corn laws and the battles between Whigs and Tories and how they transmuted into Liberal and Conservatives, and my eyes would glaze over with confusion and exhaustion.Having felt the need to rectify this ignorance, I found that the process (through this book) brought both pleasure and insight. History is more than that of merely the stories of great men (or women) - but like Pitt a few years before him, Peel had the most extraordinary impact on Britain and her allies and occasional foes (so much so that there was a unique adjournment of the French Assembly on the news of his death). Obsessive about factual detail and political argument, he was always prepared to change his mind (at huge political cost) if the arguments warranted it. This was a man of extraordinary political courage coupled with level-headed shrewdness.Hurd s narrative trips along nicely - full (as many reviewers have rightly noted) of contemporary symmetries and allusions (as only a former politician can provide - cf Hague s Pitt the Younger and Jenkins Churchill). A joy to read.
An Agreeably Readable and Perceptive History - With the full encouragement of Prof. Norman Gash, THE authority on the age of Peel, Douglas Hurd has put his many years of political experience as well as his skills as a novelist together to bring to life the career of one of Britain s greatest Prime Ministers. The previous reviews of this book give the details. I endorse their findings. If you enjoy British history, you will enjoy this book.
Robert Peel - I really enjoyed Sir Robert Peel--it s incredibly read-able, which is one of several factors that recommends it to a wide audience. One of its biggest successes is in illuminating the way the political system of the mid-nineteenth century actually worked (or didn t, at times). From the time when Peel enters government to when he leaves it, it s just a different world. The book has captured an age of transition, when people are in conflict over and changing their minds about what a government is supposed to do, and what its relationship should be to king and to country. Hurd identifies and describes these tensions well. There s no question that the book is extremely present-minded, and there were pages that, although Hurd was writing about Peel, I thought were meant to explain his view for what the Conservative Party should be. I think present-mindedness has pros and cons, but insofar as I do think the book is in some ways a manifesto of political belief, it seems to me to be appropriate to tie it back into today. Crucially, while the book does keep one eye on the present, Hurd avoids the mistake of modernizing Peel himself. However much Peel s tenure as Prime Minister may have paved the way for what we recognize as modern British politics, he was a man of his time and he did not always enter into reforms willingly. The process of change was not inexorable, Peel did not have a telos, and if he did, it certainly was not modernity as we would know it. Hurd is wise to recognize this and to allow Peel to be a man of the nineteenth century rather than a man of the twentieth.Ultimately, the book is extensively researched, well-written, and insightful. One comes away with a clear understanding of a complicated individual.
Douglas Hurd s elegantly-written masterpiece - I think! - Others have written biographies of Sir Robert Peel and it is complained by some reviewers that (Lord) Douglas Hurd has cribbed much of his material from these earlier works. Quite frankly, I see nothing wrong in the practice, provided due credit is given, and I would have thought it beneficial in any case. When writing a life, one cannot read enough. And besides, it is plainly obvious that there is much fresh material in this elegantly-written masterpiece that has the advantage of being a political biography of one of the nineteenth century s all-time greats by a very experienced and respected great of the twentieth century. The only weakness that I could detect was the author s apparent inability or unwillingness to avoid occasional and unnecessarily sarcastic references to two of my all-time twentieth century greats - Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. Despite that, this work is educative, erudite and entertaining, as one might expect. What did I learn from it? Well, I suppose that the intricacies of the Great Reform Bill s arguments are now clearer to me, I am sure that Peel s changing attitudes to Ireland are much more understandable and it is very clear indeed that the Conservative Prime Minister s reaction to the Irish potato disaster was infinitely wiser and more helpful than that of the Liberal Lord John Russell, a man whose memory is not honoured, and, though my own English farming ancestors must have held strong feelings against the repeal of The Corn Laws, again I have had it made clearer that it was the Conservative Peel who came to see that high food prices were against the national interest - and he was right, too. It is also proved, to my satisfaction at least, that Sir Robert Peel, despite his difficulties with his own kind and his own party, was a man and a politician and a statesman way ahead of his contemporaries and of his peers. And, surprising as it is coming from a supposed One Nation Tory, Douglas Hurd, the book s verdict on Benjamin Disraeli s early political career is damning: the fellow was obviously a cad and a bounder. Finally, I learned again that another great British hero, the Duke of Wellington, born in 1769, the victor of Waterloo in 1815, and Prime Minister in the 1830s, was still doing his patriotic duty as late as 1846: what a man! Maybe Lord Hurd or someone of equal eminence should bring out an up-to-date assessment of The Iron Duke as his or her next project.
Very Good - Sir Robert Peel by Douglas Hurd is a very good study of a much underated Prime Minister. As Hurd states he sacrificed his own career for the national good and won the respect of many for this. It is a very readable book and increadibly interesting.