Rosebery: Statesman in Turmoil - Couverture souple

“An absolutely wonderful biography, gripping and entertaining,”
A.N. Wilson, Evening Standard

“Superbly well researched and well written....A truly first-class addition to the genre of Prime Ministerial biography.”
Andrew Roberts, Sunday Telegraph

“As well as being meticulously researched, the book is beautifully written and has tremendous pace.”
Literary Review

“An authoritative and original biography which is also a riveting read.”
Spectator

“I do not expect to read a more enjoyable or more thoughtful political biography for a long time to come.”
Ferdinand Mount, London Review of Books

“With masterly skill and sympathy, Leo McKinstry resurrects Rosebery as the Hamlet of late Victorian England, a moody, mercurial, brilliant loner who was a source of awed fascination to his contemporaries.”
Daily Mail

“No reader of Leo McKinstry’s judicious, well-researched and engrossing portrait can fail to be mesmerised by Rosebery’s personality and complex political legacy.”
Sunday Times

“Rosebery, an accomplished author in his own right who hated pretension in writing, would surely have admired McKinstry’s clear, lucid style and his eye for humour.”
Mail on Sunday

“McKinstry has done a service to everyone interested in British politics.”
Financial Times

“Remarkable.”
Country Life

“An admirable, extremely readable biography, Rosebery has what every biographer needs: secrets.”
Scotsman

“A first-class biography, scholarly, judicious and always interesting.”
Glasgow Herald

“This impressive book.”
BBC History Magazine

“Hard to put down. Leo McKinstry has painted a fascinating portrait of a glamorous but tortured politician.”
Irish News

With a story full of colour, contradictions and controversy, the Fifth Early of Rosebery is the ideal subject for a biography. Gifted with dazzling charisma, oratorical power, intellectual brilliance and fabulous wealth, he was the last Liberal peer to become Prime Minister, succeeding William Gladstone in 1895. But his career was undermined by his erratic character, which featured chronic self-doubts and bleak melancholia. Neither his celebrity nor his fortune brought him happiness. Thrust into the public realm by his aristocratic stature and vast popularity, he constantly yearned for solitude. His insecurities were made all the worse by dark whispers about his private life which reached their climax during the trials of Oscar Wilde at the very time of his Premiership.

When first published in 2005, Leo McKinstry’s study was greeted with widespread acclaim and was shortlisted for several prizes, ultimately winning the Channel 4 Political Book of the Year. Based on a wealth of unpublished archive material, including private papers belonging to the Rosebery family, this biography represents a major contribution to British political history.

Born in Belfast in 1962, Leo McKinstry read history at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. He has been a journalist and author for more than 20 years. He is a twice weekly columnist on the Daily Express, and also appears regularly in the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and The Spectator. He has written 11 books, among them a best-selling, award-winning biography of the footballing Charlton brothers, as well as a trilogy about the RAF during the Second World War and a life of the cricketer Geoff Boycott. He is married and divides his time between Kent and northern France.