E. A. Smith - Böcker

This is the only authoritative modern biography of Charles, second Earl Grey. Grey was a leading figure in the Whig party from the 1780s to the 1830s, and is best known as the Prime Minister who passed the Great Reform Act of 1832. As Prime Minister from 1830 to 1834, Grey saw it as his mission and duty to restore public confidence in the traditional institutions of British government, rather than to promote the cause of radical reform, which he in fact detested. The biography shows that Grey was responsible for guiding the country through a period of threatened revolution and maintaining the continuity of its political institutions.Based on an extensive range of historical sources, some hitherto unpublished, this study re-evaluates Grey's career and achievements in the light of modern scholarship, and provides a unique insight into his complex and troubled personality. It will be indispensable to anyone interested in the history of this period, and in the development of modern politics.

This engrossing biography of George IV, king of England from 1820 to 1830, gives a full and objective reassessment of the monarch’s character, reputation, and achievement. Previous writers have tended to accept the unfavorable verdicts of the king’s contemporaries that he was a dissolute, pleasure-loving dilettante and a feeble and ineffective ruler who was responsible for the decline of the power and reputation of the monarchy in the early nineteenth century. Now E.A. Smith offers a new view of George IV, one that does not minimize the king’s faults but focuses on the positive qualities of his achievement in politics and in the patronage of the arts.Smith explores the roots of the king’s character and personality, stressing the importance of his relationship with his parents and twelve surviving siblings. He examines the king’s important contributions to the cultural enhancement of his capital and his encouragement of the major artistic, literary, and scholarly figures of his time. He reassesses the king’s role as constitutional monarch, contending that it was he, rather than Victoria and Albert, who created the constitutional monarchy of nineteenth-century Britain and began the revival of its popularity. Smith’s biography not only illuminates the character of one of the most colorful of Britain’s rulers but also contributes to the history of the British monarchy and its role in the nation’s life.