Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #260820 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 440 pages

Lord MacKenzie of Framwellgate, Jane's Police Review
'Hurd has produced a fascinating glimpse of Georgian/Victorian Britain which deserves commendation for its attention to details and clear exposition of the life of one of Britain's great prime ministers and political reformers

Review
'Hurd's impressive and entertaining biography.' (John Stevens THE TIMES )

'Hurd delivers a vivid and readable portrait of a semi-modern British titan. This biography is elegantly written, well researched and (usually) admirably sensible in its judgements.' (Simon Sebag Montefiore THE NEW STATESMAN )

'intelligent rich reding with a lovely droll tone.' (Duncan Fallowell THE DAILY EXPRSS )

'The author has a good grasp of the period, he has done a great deal of homework, and he has shaped the story magnificiently.' (AN Wilson THE DAILY MAIL )

'Hurd's portrait of Peel is sympathetic, pleasantly written and generally judicious in its judgements' (Harry Reid THE GLASGOW HERALD )

'Hurd's analysis of Conservative ultras up to the present day is illuminating..... It has certainly not surprised Hurd, who has made a useful contribution to our understanding of this midwife to modern and post-modern policing.' (John Grieve THE GUARDIAN )

'Douglas Hurd's fascinating, eminenty readable biography of Peel' (THE ECONOMIST )

'Hurd writes well, and the book has the merit of bringing Peel alive as a human being.' (Jane Ridley THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH )

'this warm, sensible biography of Peel does a fine job of rescuing an important figure from relative obscurity.' (Dominic Sandbrook THE DAILY TELEGRAPH )

'Hurd's finely judged biography.' (Blair Worden THE SPECTATOR )

'competently researched, well written and thoughtful reassessement of a major 19th century statesman.' (Keith Simpson HOUSE MAGAZINE )

'The book is rich in every respect.' (Mark Stuart THE SCOTSMAN )

'Hurd has produced a fascinating glimpse of Georgian/Victorian Britain which deserves commendation for its attention to details and clear exposition of the life of one of Britain's great prime ministers and political reformers (Lord MacKenzie of Framwellgate Jane's Police Review )

'Hurd's biography of Peel canters through his career, and is liberally interspersed with contemporary observations.' (Martin Mansergh THE IRISH TIMES )

'As an established novelist it is not surprising that Hurd's book is any easy read.' (Ronan O'Brien SUNDAY TRIBUNE )

AN Wilson, THE DAILY MAIL
'The author has a good grasp of the period, he has done a great deal of homework, and he has shaped the story magnificiently.'

Customer Reviews

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.

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.