Saturday 30 August 2008

 

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Clemency Burton-Hill
Clemency Burton-Hill

Clemency suggests


Gladstone: God and Politics

God and the GOM

Richard Shannon
Hambledon Continuum, 550pp, £80,
Jane Ridley
Tuesday, 5th February 2008

Jane Ridley reviews Richard Shannon's latest book on Gladstone

Richard Shannon has been writing about Gladstone on and off for almost 50 years. His first book, a study of Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation, was published in 1963. He is the author of a major biography of Gladstone in two exceptionally hefty volumes, which appeared to critical acclaim in 1982 and 1999. So why does he feel the need to hammer out another 200,000-odd words on the GOM? Well, the answer is really frustration. Shannon disarmingly admits that his two fat volumes of biography were ‘too dense for their own good’. Not enough people read them. Shannon had a view of Gladstone, but the message wasn’t getting across. The purpose of this (relatively) slim version is to drive home the Shannon thesis. Put briefly, this is that Gladstone, the founder of the Victorian Liberal party, was not really a Liberal at all, more a case of Gordon Brown meets Oliver Cromwell.

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John Verney

February 8th, 2008 2:03am

Dear Sir, These maddening moving advertisements are making the reading of the book reviews a sore test of one's concentration and sometimes an impossibility. Can it be the intention of either yourself or the advertisers to anger your readers? John Verney

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