Book description
Norman Gash's magnificent two-volume life of Sir Robert Peel - Mr
Secretary Peel (1961) and Sir Robert Peel (1972) - is the standard
work on the great statesman, and is widely considered one of the great
biographies of nineteenth-century prime ministers. Faber Finds is
delighted to return both to print. In this second volume, Gash focuses
on the years between 1830 and 1850, the height of Peel's political
career, which included his two terms as prime minister, the
controversial repeal of the Corn Laws, and his reform of the
Conservative Party. 'In ... his masterly biography, covering Peel's
career from the Reform Crisis to his untimely death in 1850, Professor
Gash shows himself not merely an admirer but an emulator - brilliant
intellect, master of detail, man of conservative but humane
conscience.' Harold Perkin, Guardian 'Norman Gash's Sir Robert Peel
shows how high and austere academic writing about a major figure is
compatible with an outstanding general biography.' Roy Jenkins,
Observer 'In Mr Secretary Peel, the first volume of this biography, he
provided a rich and perceptive portrait of a statesman in the making.
Now at last he has completed one of the great biographies of our
time.' Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph 'Sir Robert Peel by Norman Gash
ranks with the great political biographies of the past, a classic work
in both scholarship and presentation.' A. J. P. Taylor, New Statesman
Norman Gash was born in India in 1912. In 1933 he took a First
in Modern History at St John's College, Oxford. During the Second
World War he served in military intelligence and rose to the rank of
major. In 1953 he published Politics in the Age of Peel, and after two
years at the University of Leeds he was appointed Professor of History
at St Andrews, a position he held until 1980. His other publications
included The Age of Peel (1968); Reaction and Reconstruction in
English Politics, 1832-1852 (1966); Lord Liverpool (1984); Pillars of
Government (1986); and Aristocracy and People: England 1815-1865
(1979). He was appointed CBE in 1989, and died in 2009.
