Gladstone William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), four times Prime Minister and an MP for sixty-three years, was one of the greatest British statesmen. He was remarkable both for his political impact on Victorian England and for his complex personality. His astonishing energy and command of detail was matched by exceptionally wide reading (it is possible to ... more »list over 20,000 books he read) and by his active involvement in many different areas of life, in and out of politics. These essays by leading historians, published in the centenary of his death, demonstrate the many different facets to this extraordinary and idiosyncratic man.« less