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: #547249 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 938 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

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.

About the Author
Andrew Roberts took a first in Modern History at Cambridge. He has been a professional historian since the publication of his life of Lord Halifax , The Holy Fox, in 1991, followed by Eminent Churchillians in 1994 . He contributes regularly to the Sunday Telegraph. Lives in Knightsbridge, London, and has two children. His Salisbury won the Wolfson History Prize in 2000. His books include Napoleon and Wellington in 2001, Hitler and Churchill (based on BBC-2 series) in 2003. What Might Have Been (editor) in 2004. His History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900 was published in 2006 and won the Walter Bagehot Prize .

Customer Reviews

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.

This Way For Superb English Prose
Apropos of P.G. Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh once wrote that 'One has to regard a man as a Master who can produce on average three uniquely brilliant and entirely original similes to every page.' This just assessment of Wodehouse's analogical inventiveness comes to mind in reading Andrew Robert's biography of Salisbury, for, as Roberts' quotations amply demonstrate, Salibury was himself a master of analogy. Go to the index of Roberts' brilliant book and you can see for yourself his fecundity in this line under the 'views and opinions' entry. Here are some of my favorites: 'Colonial governorships,' he writes, should be looked on as 'convenient almshouses in which political incapables can be cheaply boarded and lodged.' And elsewhere he says, 'The commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcasses of dead policies. When a mast falls overboard, you do not try to save a rope here and a spar there, in memory of its former utility; you cut away the hamper altogether.' These and scores of other apt analogies splendidly substantiate Lord George Hamilton's claim that Salisbury was indeed 'the greatest master of compact and expressive language in politics.'

Highly readable, closely argued, well researched - brilliant
This biography has the level of research one would expect of the dryest of academic journals, yet the author has managed to make the work come alive. He achieves this both by his own elegant writing style and by his presentation of the man himself.

This book is not just for those interested in the period but for anybody who enjoys history or biography from any period. The book is worth reading either for the joy of reading well argued, well written English, or for the simple pleasure of learning about an otherwise sadly little known life.

The only comparable work I have read is one of Nero by Dr M Griffin - another brilliant biograhy of a historical figure.