Roy Jenkin's Gladstone (book review)

William Ewart Gladstone, was "uniquely matched to nineteenth century Britain." [1] Thus begins Roy Jenkin's massive biography on the man who, in his opinion, "...was the most remarkable specimen of humanity..." of all Prime Ministers past and present. [2] Among other things, Gladstone was an accomplished political leader, the only one ever to serve four times a Prime Minister, and perhaps was matched in terms of longevity of public service only by Winston Churchill. He was also an accomplished writer and scholar who produced numerous tracts on religious and philosophical matters, and he read over 20,000 books during his life. [3] But most importantly, he was the living embodiment, much more than its namesake, of the Victorian Era in which he lived.

Gladstone operated with a sense of morality and sense of propriety that is seldom seen in any other leader of Queen Victoria's reign, or in any before or after. Often in the 1850s, as a middle-aged Cabinet minister, Gladstone would walk in slum areas late at night, trying to "rescue" prostitutes. [4] This represented not only "...a particularly bold form of charitable work in which he had chosen to engage..." [5] but was also an example of Gladstone's constant atoning and self-punishment for his perceived moral lapses. [6]

This sense of morality and propriety carried over into Gladstone's public and political life. Despite, perhaps, being the greatest parliamentary leader of the nineteenth century, he refused to accept Queen Victoria's numerous offers of a peerage or other forms of honorific recognition. [7] Likewise, despite the political benefits to be derived from supporting imperialism during the 1880s, Gladstone was at best deeply sceptical of it, having "...both the unconventional vision to see that the British Empire was already over-extended... and the fastidiousness to dislike to dislike the tinsel of jingoistic adventures." [8] Thus he made serious attempts "...to preserve the standards of the mid-Victorian restraint in... [a] much more imperialist climate..." [9] When his Government did engage in foreign "adventures," as in the conquest of Egypt in 1882, it was to uphold and preserve order, and the military intervention was committed to only reluctantly by Gladstone. [10] The military actions that he preferred were not based on Realpolitik, but on moral concerns, such as his moral indignation toward the Turkish treatment of Bulgarians in the 1870s and the Armenians in the 1890s. [11]

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