He Discovered who the Conservatives Are

Salisbury: Victorian Titan

By

Weidenfeld & Nicholson 833pp £25 order from our bookshop

It is possible to appreciate the unique contribution of the third Marquess of Salisbury to English, British (a word he did not use) and world history, without sharing his principles’, as he judged them to be, principles which were often no more than opinions, sometimes no more than prejudices. Some of the opinions were cast aside as he transformed himself from a politician into a statesman. Yet there were abiding principles which survived. They transcended party, although, as Andrew Roberts shows in this long-awaited and meticulously researched biography, Salisbury, intelligent as well as principled, made democracy, which he despised, work for the Conservative Party. During the last decades of the nineteenth century he discovered in the ‘new suburbia and lower middle classes a whole new area of support for his brand of Tory Unionism’.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'The erecting and immediate destruction of a series of straw men rather detracts from what is for the most part an… ,
    • RT : A magnificent demolition job on this "acid laced tirade...unpleasantly self-obsessed...self pitying polemic...book… ,
    • 'Seventy years on, the time we have left to gather such first-hand testimony is running out.' John Keay on the sig… ,
    • The author 'seethes with contemptuous indignation at the shiny junk that an unregulated construction industry dumps… ,
    • 'The physical courage he demonstrated as a young man [...] gave way to intellectual power; radical thought, gifted… ,
    • 'While Jane Austen didn’t perhaps achieve the full recognition that she deserved in her lifetime, even then she out… ,
    • 'All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And t… ,
    Follow Us