Disraeli: The Victorian Dandy Who Became Prime Minister
Christopher Hibbert
Palgrave, May 2006, $29.95
ISBN: 1403972702

If anyone should never have made it to the elite of Victorian England's political power that person was Benjamin Disraeli. That is the premise of Christopher Hibbert's superb biography of the late nineteenth century prime minister. Everything about Disraeli marked him as an outsider who should have remained in the ooze below the political food chain. He was from a Jewish middle class ancestry yet somehow he became Queen Victoria's favorite politician as his ability to spellbind the House of Commons with his oratory skills and his overall strategic brilliance made him a force though also a cynical idealist.

This is a fantastic biography of an individual that brings to life one of key figures of the latter half of the nineteenth century as well as a feel for the period. Though born in 18804 (died in 1881), the emphasis is on his political career, which brings out the traits of a complicated person in vivid detail. This is must reading for biography fans as Mr. Hibbert brings Disraeli and late Victorian England to life.

Harriet Klausner