Roy Jenkins was the author of 18 books, including Gladstone, which won the Whitbread Prize for Biography. Active in British politics for half a century, he entered the House of Commons in 1948 and subsequently served as Minister of Aviation, Home Secretary, and Chancellor of the Exchequer; he was also the President of the European Commission and Chancellor of Oxford University. He died in 2003.
“[An] enthralling biography...utterly absorbing.”
—The Atlantic Monthly
“Excellent...wry, urbane, and laced with a gentle, affectionate
irony—exactly the right tone for a historical monument who really
was monumental....Jenkins makes Gladstone’s life intelligible,
affecting...entertaining.”
—The Boston Sunday Globe
“A question that Jenkins’s biography raises for the reader: why is
it so much fun to read about Victorian politics?...An exhaustive,
permanent biography, whose greatest virtue is its extraordinary
worldliness. Jenkins has a bred-in-the-bone sense, almost unique
among political biographers, of politics as improvisation, game,
and even theatre.”
—The New Yorker
Ask a Question About this Product More... |