The Unknown Gladstone: The Life of Herbert Gladstone 1854–1903, by Kenneth D. Brown

Abstract

‘The finest living embodiment of the Liberal principle that talent is not hereditary.’ Thus Lloyd George’s harsh verdict on Herbert, Viscount Gladstone, youngest son of the Liberal colossus, in 1922. In less severe terms, he has tended to be seen, like Richard Lloyd George and later Randolph Churchill, as a rather dull and disappointing offspring, dominated and diminished by a towering father. Certainly, father William overshadowed his career throughout his life: as an old man, in the 1920s, Herbert was caught up in a sensitive court case in which he successfully defended his father’s reputation against an author who had suggested (quite correctly) that John Morley’s official biography had deliberately omitted passages from William Gladstone’s diaries which reflected the old man’s...