Disraeli And the Art of Victorian Politics

This book is a comprehensive review of the political career of Benjamin Disraeli, providing a thorough critical analysis of one of the most ambitious and controversial leaders in British history. Disraeli and the Art of Victorian Politics explores the political journey of a man propelled by a tremendous self-belief and capacity for self-invention through the complex world of Victorian political life. Disraeli retains a powerful presence in contemporary political discourse; whether in terms of current debates concerning the direction and leadership within the Conservative party or in more general areas of social and political debate such as the nature of imperialism, the dangers posed by the centralization of government power, the scope for state intervention in the economy, the constitutional role of the monarch and the meaning of Judaism in British life. Dr Ian St John discusses Disraelirs"s Conservative ideology and its relationship to his identity and his practice as a politician. The author brings to life the often sharp historiographical debates surrounding Disraelirs"s career by reproducing within each chapter views from key historians an effective way to introduce the student and general reader to the contested nature of historical understanding. This title will be a major addition to our understanding of both Disraeli and the dynamics of nineteenth-century politics.

Dr Ian St John worked with David Butler at Oxford on the 1997 Nuffield Election Study and assisted Martin Westlake in the writing of Kinnock: The Biography (Little Brown, 2001). Since 2000, he has taught history at Haberdashers’ Aske’s School, Hertfordshire. His chief research interests are in Victorian history, in which he has published several articles including ‘Queen Victoria as a Politician’, The Historian (2003); ‘Disraeli’s Foreign Policy’, New Perspective (2003); and ‘Disraeli and Social Reform’, Modern History Review (2004). He has recently been engaged in studying Churchill’s attitudes towards India, contributing a chapter entitled ‘Writing to the Defence of India: Churchill’s Use of the Press in his Campaign Against Indian Reform, 1929-35’ to C Kaul (ed), Media and the British Empire (Macmillan, 2005).