Disraeli

An adventurer and charlatan, a clever rogue, or perspicacious politician, founder of the modern British Conservative party - these different characteristics have all had their supporters: Disraeli rarely experienced indifference from his contemporaries, and later commentators have often mirrored these strikingly divergent valuations.

By the time Disraeli became Prime Minister, in 1874, he was no longer the exotic, dandified figure who nearly forty years earlier had obtained protection from his creditors by the simple expedient of election to a seat in the House of Commons.

But he was still a square peg in the round hole of Westminster politics: favourite of his monarch, but disliked or distrusted by most of the members of his party.

Disraeli was a novelist as well as a politician, and he showed in his political life a novelist's command of the potent image and the pregnant phrase that have given his words potency beyond his own lifetime.

But any icon is open to manipulation and selective understanding.

As the originator of the "Two Nations" image, he can stand for 'compassionate conservatism'.As the opponent of centralization and champion of individual liberty, he can also be pressed into service as the spiritual ancestor of Thatcherite/Reaganite neo-liberal conservatism.

Feuchtwanger's lively new study does justice to Disraeli's controversial life and ambiguous political legacy, providing a portrait of a man of great personal fascination as well as shedding light on the political development of Victorian Britain.