Product Description

Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, masterminded the campaigns, alliances, treaties and pageantries which brought the British Empire to its zenith in terms of power and prestige. Prime Minister for all but four years between 1885 and 1902, it was he who, from his Jacobean palace at Hatfield, co-ordinated the subtly interlocking policies over five continents and a quarter of the globe. A profoundly unconventional aristocrat, Lord Salisbury was witty, ironic and intellectually brilliant, but there was also a ruthless, acerbic and depressive side to his nature. In the course of a turbulent fifty-year career he won over opponents such as Disraeli and Queen Victoria, destroyed others such as Lord Randolph Churchill and Paul Kruger, brought Joseph Chamberlain and King Edward VII to heel, wrecked Gladstone's hopes for Irish Home Rule, offered secret deals to Charles Stewart Parnell and Tsar Nicholas II, saw off Otto von Bismarck and saw through Kaiser Wilhelm II. In this comprehensive new biography, written with complete access to Salisbury's papers at Hatfield House, Andrew Roberts explores every aspect of Lord Salisbury's phenomenal statesmanship, but also his eccentric family, his journalism, his distinctive philosophy of Toryism, his passion for scientific experiments and above all, his extraordinary, complex, but ultimately hugely attractive character.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #482031 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10
• Binding: Hardcover
• 704 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Lord Salisbury (1830-1903) was a heavyweight Victorian politician in every sense of the word. Clocking the scales at 18 stone, the owner of a 20,000 acre landed estate at Hatfield and the writer of some two million words of political journalism, he combined the offices of Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister for 12 years at the close of the 19th century, presiding over the expansion of the British Empire overseas and the electoral dominance of the Conservative Party at home. Yet until now Lord Salisbury has been poorly served by biographers. Next to the flamboyant Disraeli and the mercurial Gladstone he is perhaps a less compelling subject, but his impact on Victorian politics and foreign policy was no less decisive. Andrew Roberts' bumper biography goes a long way to restoring Salisbury to his rightful place in the pantheon of great prime ministers. Roberts, whose earlier work has earned him the reputation as a right- wing revisionist, wears his politics lightly in this volume, weaving together a full and complex narrative in an accurate and scholarly fashion. He finds room for everything. The major set-pieces of diplomacy, rivalry with Disraeli, parliamentary reform, Home Rule and the modernisation of the Conservative Party are all there, but so too are fascinating glimpses of Salisbury's happy home life, his tinkering with science and technology and, throughout, a proper appreciation of his political journalism--"Toryism for the clever man". --Miles Taylor

Synopsis
Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, masterminded the campaigns, alliances, treaties and pageantries which brought the British Empire to its zenith in terms of power and prestige. Prime Minister for all but four years between 1885 and 1902, it was he who, from his Jacobean palace at Hatfield, co-ordinated the subtly interlocking policies over five continents and a quarter of the globe. A profoundly unconventional aristocrat, Lord Salisbury was witty, ironic and intellectually brilliant, but there was also a ruthless, acerbic and depressive side to his nature. In the course of a turbulent fifty-year career he won over opponents such as Disraeli and Queen Victoria, destroyed others such as Lord Randolph Churchill and Paul Kruger, brought Joseph Chamberlain and King Edward VII to heel, wrecked Gladstone's hopes for Irish Home Rule, offered secret deals to Charles Stewart Parnell and Tsar Nicholas II, saw off Otto von Bismarck and saw through Kaiser Wilhelm II.In this comprehensive new biography, written with complete access to Salisbury's papers at Hatfield House, Andrew Roberts explores every aspect of Lord Salisbury's phenomenal statesmanship, but also his eccentric family, his

From the Author
This is why I wrote 'Salisbury: Victorian Titan'
My purpose in writing this book was to resurrect Lord Salisbury both as a personality and a statesman. The historian AJP Taylor recognised that Salisbury was "a character in the same way that Samuel Johnson was a character", but without a full-scale biography for nearly half a century, this had been forgotten. His controversial marriage for love, his superb sense of humour, his caustic journalism, his manic depression, his sensational Cabinet resignation, all had been overlaid by dry-as-dust histories which made him out, quite wrongly, to have been just yet another boring, grey-bearded 19th century politician. As well as having one of the most complex, fascinating personalities of the Victorian age, Salisbury was the statesman who masterminded the Congress of Berlin, brought the British Empire to its height, and took over from Bismarck as the central figure of Great Power diplomacy from 1890 to 1902. Had he had his arch-rival Gladstone's political longevity, I believe he could have averted the First World War. The history of this period has for too long been dominated by Gladstone and Disraeli, yet the man who took on and beat both of them has until now been far unfairly left in the shade. In the course of a long, exciting and risk-taking political career, Salisbury worked with or fought against almost all the "greats" of the era - Queen Victoria, Cecil Rhodes, Joseph Chamberlain, Florence Nightingale, Paul Kruger, the Zulu King Cetewayo, the Mahdi, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Tsar Nicholas II - and through charm, ruthlessness and occasional dissembling he got the better of them all.

Customer Reviews

Very Good
Salisbury by Andrew Roberts is a masterful work on a giant of the Victorian political scene. It is an in-depth, but not intimidating work which is easy to read and has good pace. It deals with one of the longest serving British Prime Ministers who won three large election victories, introduced a number of reforms and extended the British Empire but always looked on the negative side of events and believed that change was to be avoided at all costs until absolutely necessary. This biography tries to explain how Salisbury dealt with being a politician with this inherrent negativity at a time of great social and political change. All in all a very good book which is not as politically biased as some of Anderew Roberts' other works.

The highest of high Tories
This is Roberts's masterwork, nearly 850 pages every one of which holds the attention. Salisbury was an even greater influence on the Conservative party than Disraeli, and Andrew Roberts shows in this portrait of a political giant why this is so. Apart from the portrait, it is a lucid account of politics and European affairs over the critical second half of the nineteenth century, out of which the terrible twentieth was formed.

An sympathetic study of a neglected political giant
The sheer size of Andrew Roberts' weighty tome might suggest that it consists of a considerable amount of useless information leavened with the occassional anecdote, written in a dry and academic style. Not so. Roberts presents the facts in a clear, entertaining manner which leaves the reader thankful that Salisbury has fianlly got the biographer he deserves. Salisbury's life and achievements are dealt with in exhaustive detail, and Roberts' character sketches of the other major players of the period - Bismarck, Disraeli, Gladstone et al - are hugely informative and entertaining.
It is clear that years of scholarship have gone into this biography. Contemporary sources and letters litter each chapter, allowing an insight into Salisbury's character and views on policy, as well as giving the reader the benefit of the phlegmatic politician's witty and concise style of writing. These sources come in particularly handy in the chapters dealing with Salisbury's foreign policy and his attitude to foreign powers, particularly Bismarckian Germany.
It is interesting to wonder what the most accomplished foreign minister in British history would think were he able to analyse Britain's current situation in the world. On finishing this book it is sobering to reflect on the past acheivements of an age now long in the past, and it might just be possible that some of Salisbury's methods might still be relevent in the 21st century.