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Synopsis
W. E. Gladstone towers over the politics of the nineteenth century. He is known for his policies of financial rectitude, his campaigns to settle the Irish question and his championship of the rights of small nations. He remains the only British Prime Minister to have served for four separate terms. In 1998 an international conference at Chester College brought together Gladstone scholars to mark the centenary of his death, and many of the papers presented on that occasion are published in this volume. Covering the whole of the statesman’s long political life from the first Reform Act to the last decade of the nineteenth century, they range over topics as diverse as parliamentary reform and free trade, Gladstone’s English Nonconformist supporters and his Irish Unionist opponents. A select bibliography, arranged by subject, supplies guidance for further research. The collection forms a tribute, appreciative but critical, to the Grand Old Man of British politics.
Booknews
Academics in history, politics, and ecclesiastical history in Wales, Scotland and England have contributed a dozen essays to this collection celebrating the centenary of Gladstone's death (many of the papers were first presented at a conference at Chester College in 1998). Individual topics consider the PM and the disruption of the Church of Scotland, his relationship with Peel, how Gladstone coped with parliamentary reform, the issue of Irish nationalism, his views and policies regarding empire, and the influence on him of Richard Cobden. Distributed by ISBS. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)