Reviews for Victoria and Disraeli

The average rating for Victoria and Disraeli based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-12-01 00:00:00 Dody Putra This was a well written side by side biography of Benjamin Disraeli and Queen Victoria. And, with the new book about her and series on the BBC and PBS it is a perfect time to focus on the people who helped Queen Victoria get through the days without her beloved Albert. Disraeli was a dandy and writer of his time who latter developed into an elder statesman, who helped with making Victoria's realm into an empire. But we all unfortunately know what has happened with the empire and its side effects which still resonate today. This book is a good introduction to this fascinating era of politics and monarchy of the middle and late 19th century. Hopefully this book inspires others to learn more about Disraeli and his times.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-01-20 00:00:00 Erica Dragoo I rate this book a 3.56 on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being best. Disraeli is another in the long list of historical figures whose conversion from Judaism is rewarded with high office. In this book we learn that Disraeli had trouble with hearty meals and eschewed dinner parties: "He could not digest the obligatory gigantic meals." There are good examples of Victoria's rhetoric: Upon being importuned to open parliament after the death of Albert she says: "The Queen must say that she feels very bitterly the want of feeling of those who ask the Queen to go to open Parliament...why this wish should be of so unreasonable and unfeeling a nature as to long to witness the spectacle of a poor widow, nervous and shrinking, dragged in deep mourning ALONE in STATE as a Show where she used to go supported by her husband to be gazed at, without delicacy of feeling, is a thing she cannot understand, and never could wish her bitterest foe exposed to.' There are certainly hints of the Churchill to come here. Disraeli seems to have been a wishy-washy politician at heart: “His religious beliefs, like his political, were hazy, eccentric, inconsistent... he once airily dismissed the entire controversy about Darwin's Origin of the Species by declaring that he was 'on the side of the Angels'.” An interesting early example of crony capitalism: 4,000,000 pounds to purchase minority shares of Suez Canal were loaned to Disraeli by Baron Lionel de Rothschild, who ate grapes as Montagu Corry, Disraeli's secretary, made him the proposal. Is seems that sexual politics was already being played in those days: Disraeli is supposed to have made sexual innuendos against Gladstone, his political arch-rival, surrounding the latter's activities reforming prostitutes and pornography.