Robert Peel: A Biography

by Douglas Hurd

Described as one of the 19th century’s most dynamic prime ministers, Robert Peel transformed Great Britain into a modern nation. He invented the police force, steered through legislation that allowed Catholics to sit in Parliament, reorganized the criminal justice system, and invented the Conservative Party as it exists today. Above all he tackled poverty by repealing the Corn Laws and, thanks to Peel, Britain chose free trade and opened the door for globalization. For all his achievements, however, Peel was not all politics: he built two great houses, filled them with famous paintings, and was devoted to his beautiful wife. Yet he was widely regarded as stiff and strange, with Queen Victoria describing him as “such a cold, odd man” while Disraeli attacked him for dishonesty. But when in 1850 he was carried home after a fall from his horse, crowds primarily composed of working people gathered outside his house to read the medical bulletins. When he died a few days later, factories closed, flags flew at half mast, and thousands contributed small sums to memorials in his honor. Like Peel, Douglas Hurd served as Home Secretary and lived through a time of conflict in the Conservative Party. With one eye on the present, Douglas Hurd charts Peel's life and work through the dramas of 19th century politics.

Genres: History, Biography, Politics, Nonfiction, British Literature

440 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 2007

About the author

Douglas Hurd, Baron (born 1930), is a British Conservative politician and novelist, who served in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major between 1979 and his retirement in 1995.

Born in Marlborough, Wiltshire, Hurd first entered parliament in February 1974, as MP for the Mid Oxfordshire constituency. His first government post was as Minister for Europe, and he served in several cabinet posts from 1984 onwards, including Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (1984-85), Home Secretary (1985-89) and Foreign Secretary (1989-95). He stood unsuccessfully for the Conservative Party leadership in 1990 and retired from frontline politics during a cabinet re-shuffle in 1995.

In 1997, Hurd entered the House of Lords. Viewed as one of the Conservative Party's senior elder statesmen, he is a patron of the Tory Reform Group, and remains an active figure in public life. Hurd is a writer of political thrillers including The Image in the Water, and a collection of short stories in Ten Minutes to Turn the Devil.

Reviews

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Forgotten Statesman

Sir Robert Peel is one of the greatest statesmen in British history, yet today he is widely forgotten about. A principled family man who split the Tory party in half over the repealing of the hated Corn Laws and opening the UK to a free market. Working in alliance with Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington he also introduced the first police force whose policing principles are still used today and are seen as a bench mark for the concept of policing by consent around the world. Peel worked tremendously hard throughout his life and didn’t seem to make great friends beyond his family, who he loved. Douglas Hurd brings to life an essential character in British history and I recommend you to read this book.

Hurd, himself a former British Foreign Secretary, brings a politician’s insight to the task, providing a nuanced examination of Peel's life, career, and the profound impact he had on the evolution of British politics. With this in mind, Hurd is able to contextualise Peel within the tumultuous political landscape of early 19th Century Britain. Hurd meticulously traces Peel’s rise from his birth in Bury, Lancashire, then his early years as the son of a wealthy industrialist, through his education at Harrow and Oxford, to his entrance into Parliament at the young age of 21. Hurd highlights Peel's remarkable adaptability and pragmatism, traits that would define his political career.

Peel's tenure as Prime Minister, particularly his role in the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, is rightly given central attention. Hurd skillfully unpacks the complexities of this decision, portraying it as a moment of high political drama and personal conviction. As I have mentioned above, the repeal split the Conservative Party and ultimately cost Peel his political career, is presented as a defining moment not only for Peel but for the future of the British political system. Hurd does an excellent job of showing how Peel's actions laid the groundwork for the modern Conservative Party and established the principles of governance that would endure long after his death.

What I like about Robert Peel is Hurd’s ability to balance Peel's public achievements with his private struggles. Hurd delves into Peel’s often difficult relationships with his contemporaries, his cautious and reserved personality, and the toll that political life took on him. This humanising portrayal helps to dispel the image of Peel as a cold, unfeeling technocrat, revealing instead a man deeply committed to public service, yet painfully aware of the personal sacrifices it demanded.

However, Robert Peel is not without its minor drawbacks. Hurd's admiration for Peel sometimes borders on reverence, which might lead readers to question whether the biography gives enough weight to Peel's shortcomings or the criticisms leveled against him by his contemporaries. Additionally, while Hurd’s focus on Peel’s major achievements is well placed, some readers might wish for more discussion on his lesser known policy and their longer lasting effects. Nevertheless as you might expect a huge focus is on creation of the modern police force and his influence on later political figures, including Hurd himself. This is perhaps what you may have expected, which is perfectly fine and also extremely important. As such, the book offers a thoughtful reflection on how Peel's principles of law, order, and gradual reform continue to resonate in British politics today.

In the end, this is thorough and richly detailed book on a great and under appreciated statesman. It is accessible and written in a clear and engaging style that will appeal to both academic readers and those with a general interest in history. Hurd’s background as a politician adds an extra layer of insight, allowing him to explore not just the events of Peel’s life, but the intricacies of political leadership and decision making. High politics reviewing high politics.

[John Bohnert · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first became aware of Robert Peel while enjoying the series "Victoria" on PBS.
As a result of reading this biography I greatly admire the man.

[Rupert Matthews · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was absolutely fascinating, but it was a bit long for my tastes. I was intereseted in the career and politics of Peel, but to be honest it did go into enormous detail about some side issues that I felt did not add much to the subject in hands.

These days, Sir Robert Peel is probably best known for founding the modern police force and for abolishing the Corn Laws. Of these the lattre is dealt with in detail, but the former is not. For what is surely the greatest element of his legacy that continues to have an impact on the day to day lives of people in the UK and in many other countries, I found this covered rather sketchily. Similarly, his family life is rather skated over. We learn a bit about his wife, but the others barely get a look in.

On the other hand we hear a lot - and I mean a lot - about what went on in the House of Commons. Who made what speech and when, what impact the speech had, or didn't as the case may be. Similarly votes in Parliament are given in quite excruciating detail. I know that they are important, but really!? I suppose the fact that the author was an MP and cabinet minister for many years explains his fascination here.

Overall, this was a good book but in my opinion it was too long and too detailed on certain aspects of Peel's career while it did not give due attention to other aspects.

[E. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Peel, the 19th century British Prime Minister, appeared as a supporting character in a number of things I've read and watched in the last year. I had a growing intuition that Peel is the sort of leader our nation will require in the next generation to recover from our current crisis. So, I wanted to know more about him.

This biography is written by Douglas Hurd, the former Foreign and Home Secretary, writing as a contemporary Conservative politician on the founder of the Conservative party. Hurd's asides comparing Peel and his time to issues in our time are part of the joy of the book.

In short, I have come away from the book hoping that America will find someone like Peel to help lead us in the middle of this century. But, yet, how unlikely that will be because Peel is so singular and rare. We can only hope.

Peel created the modern police force, revised the entire English economy, helped to reform the church, reformed the banking system, completed negotiations with the US settling our northern border, revised the entire English criminal code, and helped open public office to Roman Catholics. But his greatest achievement, according to Hurd, was establishing free trade as the dominant global force it has become.

What Hurd admires most about Peel's position on free trade, is that Peel did not make it a matter of negotiation with other nations, with some quid pro quo. He eliminated English tariffs unilaterally because he felt it the right thing to do. Primarily that it would lower the cost of living for the poor and working classes, helping to improve their lives. And also that the bounties of nature (God's blessings) ought to be able to move about the world freely to the benefit of all.

Peel's form of conservatism was devoted to some key ideals and values, not any dogmatic positions on issues and policies. For he radically changed his mind on major issues more than once--Catholic emancipation and the Corn Laws being the two supreme examples. Where others, such as Benjamin Disraeli, saw hypocrisy and equivocation, Peel saw his changes of mind as furthering the core values.

Those were conservative values of maintaining order and stability and moving slowly and deliberately to change and only when the facts and reason compelled it. Peel studied the French Revolution in-depth, clearly in an attempt to understand what forces had led to it and how to avoid something similar in Britain. So his changes of mind on major issues were often because he realized that to hold dogmatically to a position would invite social discord and lead to the destruction of the things he valued most. He could not grasp why other conservatives did not understand this.

So his concerns to alleviate poverty did not arise from some deep humanitarian feeling--quite the contrary--but because he saw poverty as leading to social disorder and revolution. Therefore poverty should be alleviated.

He was also committed to diplomacy and a quieter, persuasive foreign policy. The more adventurous foreign policy of Palmerston, for instance, appalled him. He thought a strong nation was made stronger by persuading others to adopt its values (Hurd has a little commentary on recent American foreign policy at this point).

In the introduction Hurd writes that 150 years is a relatively short time in the life of a nation (a sentence I marveled at as an American) while making the point that the issues dominant in Peel's day are not completely gone from British life and his solutions created the systems still followed.

Peel was pragmatic, studied deeply, worked hard, led decisively, was convinced by facts and reason to change his mind, and was devoted and loyal to family and friends. Even when he was the leader of the opposition, he argued that it was wrong to oppose everything the Whigs did, that instead the proper role for the opposition was to help for the good of the country to achieve the best legislative outcomes. He also thought that doing so built trust that would lead to electoral success, and he was proven right.

So I read this book with a deep sense of admiration and sadness at the current plight of America and what we lack in our political leaders.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the greatest of statesmen for Great Britain and founder of what is now the modern Conservative Party, Sir Robert Peel was born in 1788 to a gentry family and at Oxford was considered
something of a prodigy. In 1809 Peel entered Parliament and by 1822 he was in the cabinet of Lord
Liverpool as Home Secretary.

If he did nothing else Peel would have gone down in history for starting the modern British police
force in London. The nickname of 'bobbies' that men of the force have his attributed to Peel.

Ironically Peel was always a man who could tell when reform was needed. He changed his mind and
voted for Catholic emancipation when he said something on the order that he would rather see Catholics voting than revolution. Thus he supported Catholic Emancipation in 1830. He was slower
on the uptake with reapportionment with the reform bill of 1830. When it happened though he
sought to open new constituencies for his party.

He was first prime minister in 1834-1835 as a minority government, the last time one was formed
without a parliamentary majority. In 1841 Peel led a Conservative government that lasted for five
years.

Among other things passed was the Factory Act of 1844 designed to improve working conditions as
Peel sought to reshape his party and seek a broader voting base. The big test was the tariff reform
or repeal of the Corn Laws. The rock of protectionism was what the old Tories were built on. Peel
got the tariff duties lowered, but the government fell.

For the last few years of his life Peel led an independent following of MPs called Peelites. They
consisted a lot of his former ministers, the front bench of the party. The backbenchers were led
by Lord Derby and a rising Benjamin Disraeli.

Peel died in 1850 when he was thrown from a horse and sustained multiple injuries. His followers
chief of whom was William Gladstone joined with the Whigs and formed the Liberal Party.

Author Douglas Hurd who was a member of the Conservative governments of Margaret Thatcher
and Ted Heath has some unique insights comparing the problems of the 20th century Tory governments to what Peel dealt with. Those insights are what makes this book one worthwhile
read.

[John Hayward · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author's own pompous prejudice is on display from the earliest pages. Nevertheless, the biography's subject is well portrayed. ?? "Peel began to stress the importance of using the ordinary law rather than exceptional measures whenever possible. In his view, as he wrote to a correspondent at the end of 1816, it was often 'better to bear with some disturbance than to repress it by the means of unusual and extreme authority'." ?? "'There is nothing like a fact,' he wrote to one official in 1814, and again two years later, 'Facts are ten times more valuable than declamations'." ?? "[Reformers of the 1820s] wanted to move towards greater freedom, in trade, in the currency, in speech, even in the organisation of trade unions. To them it was a backward step to create a police force, which they saw essentially as an instrument of government designed to watch the citizen and curb his freedom." ?? "Surely government, civil government, means something more than the rigid enforcement of penal law ... there is a willing moral obedience, founded on the sense of equal justice, without which the terrors of the law would be vain." ?? "You will not advance the cause of constitutional government by attempting to dictate to other nations...If you succeed I doubt whether or not the institutions that take root under your patronage will be lasting. Constitutional liberty will be best worked out by those who aspire to freedom by their own efforts." ? "Imposition of a na‹vely designed ?red meat tax? has the potential to invite socioeconomic losses far greater than its environmental benefits, due largely to the induced misallocation of resources at the national scale." (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/environme...) ?? I am reminded of what Sir Robert Peel, founder of the modern Conservative Party, once wrote: ?? "We must make this country a cheap country for living ? The danger is not low price from the tariff, but low price from inability to consume, from the poor man giving up his pint of beer and the man in middling station giving up his joint of meat." https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93...

[Dave Appleby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hurd traces the life and career of the first 'Conservative' Prime Minister, a man whose career started in the days of Rotten Boroughs and a monarch (George IV) who played an active part in government to the beginnings of the party system with mostly-contested elections and manifestos and a monarch (Victoria) who was soon sidelined after her initial meddling. And on the way he helped ensure that Roman Catholics could become MPs, he created the first organised police force, he reformed a chaotic penal code, he sorted out the US-Canada border, he helped the Whigs bring in the Great Reform Act, he reformed working conditions for women and children in mines and factories, and, during the Irish famine, he repealed the Corm Laws which imposed tariffs on imported corn, keeping the price of bread artificially high. In order to get this last piece of legislation through he had to battle against his own right wing; he split his own party and carried the vote with the help of the Whigs and Radicals in opposition. He was therefore remembered in two ways: as a turncoat who twice (Catholic emancipation and the Corn Laws) abandoned earlier principles and the self-interested principles of his own party and as a man who put the well-being of the ordinary people, particularly those who had no vote, before the interests of faction.

Unfortunately, Hurd is writing in 2007. He assumes that the Tory hard right (the 'Ultras' as Peel called them, the 'sour right' as Hurd labels them) are a self-destructive lot who will never win power as mainstream Conservatives; in the aftermath of Brexit we now know that to be wrong. He also assumes that Peel's repeal of the Corn Laws, a unilateral abandonment of a key tariff, was the first step in an unstoppable journey towards globalisation and free trade. In the aftermath of Brexit this is another conclusion that now looks unsupportable.

A well-written and eminently readable biography of a politician whose multiple achievements deserve to be better known.

[Teddy Dodger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incisive and interesting but I found some of the attempts to draw modern parallels less than helpful, a common trope in biographies about politicians written by politicians (see also Gladstone, Jenkins and Pitt the Younger, Hague)

That says one that did work, and which I think will have relevance in the next 2-3 years was the Conservative Party after 1832. There was an 'ultras' faction who found any compromise with the 1832 Reform Act a betrayal (Gladstone was initially part of this group). And a more moderate faction led by Peel who wanted to make their peace with the Act and build a coalition that could make the Conservatives a competitive

Hurd contrasts this with the Conservative Party after 1990+ 1997. David Cameron ultimately charted a similar kind of 'opposition' to Peel.

What happens, if the Conservatives lose in 2024, will be interesting to observe.

[Alice Haighton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whilst the presentation of Peel is certainly somewhat overzealous and excruciatingly positive in aspects, overall this book does a good job of balancing accounts of Peel's personal life with those of his successes and failures in government, and with contextual political and social events which position Peel's life and career in the world of Victorian Politics. Hurd successfully evaluates the issues of Catholic Emancipation and Protectionism, although the creation of the Metropolitan Police Force, arguable Peel's crowning achievement, is somewhat pushed aside. Overall, this is a convincing and fascinating biography of a bright yet over-cautious politician.

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Prime Minister and he invented uniformed police force, the Bobbies. That is what I knew. Now I know a bit more. Napoleon has been defeated and to say the truth politics the following years are a bit boring for a German of the 21st century. We have the Ireland conflict and the struggle for Catholic Emancipation. A Catholic, I learn, was a man who was in favor of emancipation. Interesting. Peel was against it. But eventually in favor. Which gave him the reputation of being a rat. Then there are the Corn-laws. Something very difficult to understand.
It was Peel who made the transformation of the tories to Conservatives.
There is not much on foreign policy and I would have liked to get some more information about the movement against slavery.
One thing I liked about the book is that Hurd draws parallels to 20th-century politicians. Churchill, Heath, Thatcher. He himself was home and foreign secretary.
Peel was an art collector and he died after he fell from his horse.

[Deborah · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit dry, but opened my eyes to some of the social and political problems of the day

[Nicholas Little · Rating 4 out of 5]

A highly readable account of a much overlooked Prime Minister.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Peel is often seen as the first "middle class" prime minister of Great Britain. By that we mean that he was not a duke, earl, marquis, etc., but rather the eldest son of a hereditary baronet (not a member of the nobility. It still entitled to call himself "sir" once his father died.). He was also the first prime minster to credibly lead a "party" (the Conservative party) rather than a "faction", and was the first prime minister that was put in power by an election -- against the wishes of the sitting sovereign -- Queen Victoria. On queen Victoria: she at first hated him (actually created a scene after his election that forced him to abandon the call to form a government) and then later loved him with a great admiration saved for only a few of her prime ministers (Melbourne, Peel, Disraeli).

He had somewhat of a reputation for political expediency because he was willing to change his mind when presented with evidence, research, or political or public imperatives (which of course only really annoyed those on the hard right of the spectrum). He changed his mind on: reforming parliament (to being for it), slavery (to being against it), the corn law taxes on imported food stuffs from foreign countries (to being against them for the sake of feeding the British people), Prince Albert (to realizing that he was far saner than the queen), and much more. All in all, I'd say that if we had more conservative politicians in the US with Peels sense, we'd be a far better country.

[Katharine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clear synthesis of the life of an important 19th century politician written by a modern politician. Douglas Hurd does a good job of explaining Peel's career and its significance to both his own times and our own. Sometimes the references to Hurd's own career grate a little but his comments on the differences between politics then and now can be illuminating. The focus is very heavily on Robert Peel as a politician and, though Hurd does touch on the private man and his interests, I would have liked to know a little more about his wife and family, but this is generally an interesting read about a man who has been undeservedly forgotten in recent times.