Rosebery: Statesman in Turmoil

by Leo McKinstry

The Fifth Earl of Rosebery was the most glamorous Liberal politician of the late Victorian age. As a young man, he said that he had three ambitions: to marry an heiress, win the Derby, and become Prime Minister. By his mid-forties, he had achieved all three. But his political career was clouded by his strange, mercurial character. Self-centred, impulsive, and neurotic, he mixed a desire for prestige with extreme sensitivity to any criticism. After retiring from the Liberal Leadership in 1896, he became an increasingly solitary, brooding figure, wandering restlessly from one of his mansions to another. Using a wealth of archival material, award-winning author Leo McKinstry reveals the contradictory personality behind the magnetic public figure.

Genres: Politics, History, Biography

640 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Leo McKinstry writes regularly for the Daily Mail, Sunday Telegraph and Spectator. He has also written nine books including a life of Geoff Boycott, which was recently named one of the finest cricket books written in a Wisden poll. His best-selling biography of the footballing Charlton brothers was a top-ten bestseller and won the Sports Book of the Year award, while his study of Lord Rosebery won Channel Four Political Book of the year. Most recently he has written a trilogy about the RAF in the Second World War, including Spitfire, Lancaster and Hurricane.

Born in Belfast he was educated in Ireland and at Cambridge University.

Reviews

[Mary Pagones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lord Rosebery today is primarily famous for his alleged role in the Oscar Wilde affair. McKinstry is an excellent biographer, and offers a meticulously researched, detailed portrait of Rosbery's personal and political life. He clearly has a take on Rosebery's life, but does not filter out every scrap of evidence that might contradict it.

I will note that McKinstry's analysis of the history of sexuality of the day is far shakier--for example his insistence that Rosebery couldn't have been gay or bisexual because of his expressed affection for his wife, or his allegation that McKinstry's private secretary (Lord Alfred Douglas' brother) must likewise have been straight because Douglas was considered very attractive by women. But with this caveat, Rosebery's life offers a sweeping portrait of the politics of Britain's Age of Empire.

[James Carrigy · Rating 2 out of 5]

5/10

Smeared with a thin veneer of light Toryism, but arguably worse than that is it's just so utterly plodding. That's largely down to the over-extensive use of primary source quotations, which is admittedly fair enough given that a lot of it was at the time recently unearthed by its author. But it doesn't make for great reading, not least when the subject is such a melancholic and dyspeptic personality who would benefit from a more sensitive, nuanced and qualified biographer.