Disraeli

Douglas Hurd (Author) Former diplomat, private secretary to Edward Heath (as Ldr of the Opposition and as PM); MP 1974-97. Served Margaret Thatcher as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, as Home Secretary and as Foreign Secretary. As a writer is the (co-)author of many thrillers including IMAGE IN THE WATER, his MEMOIRS in 2003 and other non-fiction titles.Edward Young (Author) Edward Young gained a first-class degree in history from Clare College, Cambridge, and won a Mellon Scholarship to Yale where he studied history and international relations as part of the Grand Strategy Program. He has since worked as a speechwriter for David Cameron and as Chief of Staff to the Conservative Party Chairman. He currently works at Brunswick Group LLC. Disraeli is Edward's third book in collaboration with Lord Hurd, having worked as a research assistant for his biography of Sir Robert Peel, and co-authoring Choose Your Weapons, a history of British foreign policy.

Were the hatchet a less brutal tool, this gripping, succinct and lethal book would deserve the name of hatchet job. The authors get right inside their subject and stay there; this is where their work is done; and, before the reader's eyes and wholly unassaulted, Benjamin Disraeli dies from the inside. Disraeli was not a "one-nation" politician. He neither used the phrase nor implied the idea. Hurd and Young bring to life his wishful dream of the order of things that he had himself mythologised, and wished to protect: nobility, breeding, monarchy, finery, feasting, good-looking young men and grand old ladies.