Harper Perennial William Pitt the Younger, Non-Fiction, Paperback, William Hague
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Price: £18.99
Brand: Harper Perennial
Description: The award-winning biography of William Pitt the Younger by William Hague, the youngest leader of the Tory Party since Pitt himself. Harper Perennial William Pitt the Younger, Non-Fiction, Paperback, William Hague - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: Harper Collins
Product ID: 9780007147205
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Dimensions: 129x198mm
Keywords: British politics,politics,prime minister,Wilberforce,Commons,George III,Tories,parliament,government,Lord Melville,Madness of King George,William Hague,Whigs,Pitt the Elder
ISBN: 9780007147205
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Author: David Beeson
Rating: 5
Review: As long as he takes the time to do the painstaking work of a scholar, making sure he has mastered his brief, it is hard to imagine anyone better qualified than a former politician to write the biography and evaluate the career of a major political figure. William Pitt is called ‘the Younger’ to distinguish from his father, who had also been Prime Minister. The younger Pitt, however, reached the top office in Britain at a far younger age, taking power at 24. Not only does that make him the youngest Prime Minister Britain has had, it also means that when he resigned in 1801, after seventeen years in power, he was still younger than anyone else has ever been on first acceding to the office. Hague does an excellent job of charting Pitt's life, starting with an education which developed the skills he would need for politics, above all the rhetorical ability that would allow him to dominate the House of Commons more completely than any of his contemporaries. He shows Pitt launching his career with the doggedness that would mark its whole length: when King George III first offered him the premiership, Pitt refused it until he could be sure he would hold it on his own terms. Far more powerful than British monarchs today, with enormous wealth to offer patronage or even buy parliamentary support (many parliamentary seats were in tiny constituencies dominated by the local noble or wealthy landowner, who could put them up for sale), the King was a major politician in his own right, as Hague points out. Pitt did not want to be so beholden to him for his office that he could not pursue independent policies. When he did judge the conditions to be right and first took office, he found himself, on the other hand, facing a hostile house of commons where his opponents held a majority. One of the most interesting passages of this gripping book describes the way he clung to power for several months until sure he could win an election and cement his grip on it. As he duly did. Pitt’s was by no means a career of constant success. An aspect of the biography that is particularly appealing is its description of how he held positions that many of us would find liberal, despite his reputation as a major figure in Conservative politics: before he came to power, he opposed the British war against the American colonists fighting for their independence, as his father had done before him. In office, he tried to put in place more equitable relations between Britain and Ireland – had he succeeded, Ireland might well not have been driven into such bitter and sustained conflict with its neighbour as it was, until it broke free nearly a century and a half later. Pitt also supported his friend William Wilberforce in working for an end to the slave trade and, ultimately, of slavery though as was the case with Ireland he made no headway against the vested interests that defeated his every initiative. In this kind of stance, Pitt seems to be belie his description by many later commentators as a Tory, or Conservative, Prime Minister. It is because many of his collaborators, many of the politicians he trained or mentored, would later be identified as Tories that he's seen as a Tory himself. That was not how he saw himself, as Hague makes clear: he always described himself as an independent Whig and therefore an opponent of the Tories. Where he was perhaps most successful was in his financial policies, including the brilliant insight of fighting smuggling by reducing customs duties. Where he was arguably least successful was in waging war against France, in which he failed to strike a decisive blow in his lifetime. The Napoleonic wars did indeed carry on for another nine years after his death. Given the power he was up against, however, and the difficulties he encountered in trying to build and hold together a coalition to oppose it, it is hard to see what chance he had to do better. In success or in failure, in reforming and in conservative measures, Pitt is a remarkable man, well worth getting to know better. Not just as a politician, either: at a personal level, what emerges from the pages of the books is a man who may well have been gay (though there is no conclusive evidence either way). He may have battled to hide his sexual orientation because to avow it, at that time, would have been to cripple his career. Equally, though Hague does not make the case, I found it hard not to wonder whether it was the need to hide an inclination of which he was ashamed, and for which he would have been condemned, that drove him to devote himself so entirely to a life of politics. William Hague has given us an outstanding biography of this brilliant and complex man. I actually read it (or listened to it as an audiobook) twice in a row, testimony if any were needed to just how firmly it held my attention. I'm sure that any reader interested in political biography, or in understanding an intriguing period, would find Hague's study just as inspiring.
Author: hillbank68
Rating: 4
Review: William Hague points out in the afterword to this book that Margaret Thatcher likened him to Pitt the Younger when he famously took the stage at the Conservative Party Conference aged 16 many years ago. He certainly has a sympathy for his subject but not a slavish one ; he sees weaknesses as well as strengths. It needs to be said that this is a hard-worked book, and Hague's conscientious research is everywhere apparent. He usually avoids the danger of an invisible wood hidden by multitudes of trees - perhaps not quite, or not always - but there is still a lot of information in the book, and it's a long book. Hague also faces a difficulty in the nature of his subject. If you take the politician away from Pitt, there is not much left. Disraeli, Gladstone and Churchill, to name only three, were interesting characters in themselves, never mind their achievements ; Pitt was an unmarried, totally dedicated politician with an enigmatic nature, little in the way of hobbies and few friends. He drank very heavily and no doubt enjoyed the experience, but even that stemmed from medical advice and not what might be thought an interesting recklessness of character. However, the events through which he lived - the American War, attempts at parliamentary reform, the 'madness' of the King (actually probably acute intermittent porphyria), the anti-slavery movement with his friend Wilberforce, the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars - are all important and some are momentous. Hague tells the tale of all these things and his subject's involvement in them pretty well. He writes clearly and articulately and has quite a good sense of structure in his narrative - he is, for example, good at cliff-hangers at section and chapter endings. There are a few entertaining anecdotes (not many). What he fails to do for me is convey the astonishing power of Pitt as a parliamentary orator. Often he writes of a devastating speech, or one which thrilled the Commons with its clarity, logic and intellectual brilliance, but he doesn't really make that come to life in the quotations he chooses, which (admittedly out of context) seem to me wordy and even a little pompous sometimes. But fair's fair - I enjoyed the book, it is a good work of scholarship, it does cast a great deal of light on the subject and his time, and it is rather touching that it has been written by a modern politician who, whatever the similarities, has yet to come within shouting distance of Pitt's achievement in his time - as I am sure Hague would have the realism and humility to acknowledge.
