num_pages: 265
description: Less cynical than Talleyrand, more imaginative than Metternich, as creative as Guizot, Lord Liverpool was one of the great European conservatives of his age. He served as prime minister for the longest continuous term in nineteenth-century Britain and presided over the triumphant years of the Napoleonic War, the strife-torn era of the "Peterloo" massacre, and the founding of the great liberal free-trade revolution in financial and commercial policy that heralded Victorianism.Norman Gash's biography is the first modern reassessment of this misunderstood statesman. Gas places Liverpool within the kaleidoscopic parliamentary politics of the time and shows how he governed with the collective strength and unity of the cabinet. By offering parsimonious administration and enlightened economic policy. Liverpool hoped to preserve the old constitution and prevent both Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform. Balancing interests and preserving order, Liverpool also contended with the vicissitudes of the still powerful monarchs -- the aging and disturbed George III and the capricious and self-indulgent George IV, whose attempted divorce almost toppled the Liverpool administration.This is not only an account of one of the most professional prime ministers of Great Britain, but also the story of the personal relations that shaped Lord Liverpool and the private life that gave him immense satisfaction. Based on correspondence and Lord Liverpool's private papers, Gash's work recasts the history of a turbulent age and its most prominent political figure.
language: English
title: Lord Liverpool: The Life And Political Career Of Robert Banks Jenkinson, Second Earl Of Liverpool, 1770-1828
titlecomplete: Lord Liverpool: The Life And Political Career Of Robert Banks Jenkinson, Second Earl Of Liverpool, 1770-1828
characters: George IV of Great Britain and Ireland, Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, Henry Bathurst, 3rd Earl Bathurst, William Huskisson, Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth, Charles Jenkinson, 1st Earl of Liverpool, John Scott, 1st Earl of Eldon, George Canning, Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley
ratings_count: 12
publisher: Harvard University Press