Political biographies to enjoy in lockdown

Here are ten political biographies, with a leavening of the classics, for those with time to kill in the present house arrest. The danger with such lists is that what has recently entered the memory becomes most prominent; so this one consists entirely of works published in the 20th century. Charles Moore’sThatcher, Leo McKinstry’s Rosebery and Andrew Roberts’s Churchill, all superb works, therefore do not figure; and I have arranged those that do in chronological order of their subjects.

John Ehrman started his magnificent three-volume life of William Pitt the Younger in the late 1950s and published the final part in 1996. He was a gentleman-scholar of the old school who undertook pains-taking research but sought to produce a literary work as well as one of history. Ehrman presented Pitt with a depth and colour that made him a three-dimensional figure; his complex personality and precocious talent are reproduced against a backdrop of a country in turmoil, as it loses its American empire and faces invasion by Napoleon. Although William Hague thought differently (and his own book owes an enormous amount to Ehrman), no one need write another life of Pitt.

Norman Gash’s two-volume life of Robert Peel (Mr Secretary Peel,1961; Sir Robert Peel,1972) has a similar depth and breadth as Ehrman’s Pitt, and, like that work, provides thorough context of the times. Gash’s biography is absorbing because his subject is far from monochrome. Peel’s work as home secretary went far beyond founding the Metropolitan Police; he also saw through Catholic Emancipation. But his decision, partly under the influence of Gladstone, to repeal the Corn Laws in 1846 underpinned Victorian prosperity, helped develop a middle class, and exposed the flaws of a class-based Tory party. One might disagree with Gash’s interpretation of Pitt, but his scholarship and writing are beyond question.