Lord Salisbury's World: Conservative Environments in Late-Victorian Britain

Description

Lord Salisbury (1830-1903) is now a subject of intense historical attention. This important study moves away from conventional biography and presents an original portrait of the mental world inhabited by late Victorian Conservatives at the time when their world-view was coming under severe strain. At the centre of the picture is the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, but Lord Salisbury's World does not simply tell the story of his life and politics. Instead, it asks sensitive questions about how the political, intellectual and religious environments of the late Victorian period seemed to one of its sharpest intellects, and it situates Salisbury and his immediate entourage in a wide landscape of relationships, perceptions and problems. Professor Bentley takes the reader into Conservative assumptions about time and space, property and society, religion and the state, and the past and the future - the very language in which they expressed themselves.

Michael Bentley has been Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews since 1995. He is the author of a well-known volume in the Fontana History of England (Politics without Democracy, 1815-1914) and of several studies of Liberal politics in Britain. In 1993 he was editor of Public and Private Doctrine: Essays in British History Presented to Maurice Cowling, Cambridge University Press (0521400139). He is a regular reviewer, and teaches over a wide range of issues, from intellectual history to historical theory. He is currently Programme Chair of the International Commission on Historiography.

'... this book is considerably more than a biography. It is an extensive review of the political, intellectual, religious an social ambiance of late nineteenth century Britain.' Open History 'Bentley does not seek to advance any particular view of Salisbury or of his significance, and, as a result, this is a book from which, more than is usual among academic volumes, readers will come away with different ideas.' Times Literary Supplement 'Bentley clearly enjoyed writing this book and readers will share that pleasure in digesting a very sophisticated treatment of its subject.' History