Graham Stewart
Political Publicists
The Lion and the Unicorn: Gladstone and Disraeli
By Richard Aldous
Hutchinson 384pp £20 order from our bookshop
In Iolanthe, it was the contemplative guardsman on sentry duty who discerned that every boy and every girl that is born into this world alive is either a little Liberal or else a little Conservative. Similarly, in matters of character, most of us feel an instinctive affinity either for W E Gladstone, the stern, principled statesman, or for his rival, the whimsical and exotic pragmatist, Benjamin Disraeli. A specialist knowledge of Victorian history is not a prerequisite for declaring admiration for one or the other any more than it is the preserve of accredited tennis coaches to admit favouritism between Borg and McEnroe.
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