An historian praising another historian, now that makes a welcome change from those extraordinary events in April!
Andrew Roberts took time off from a recent book tour promoting his own The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War to write this remarkably generous tribute to Robert Blake:
Faber Finds are doing many good things and one of the very best is reissuing Robert Blake’s titles. With five titles scheduled to be made available again this year, they are not stinting. That is how it should be.
Robert Blake was a fine scholar and the leading historian of the Tory Party. As I know from personal experience, he was also a sweet and charming man who never failed to help and encourage historians far younger than him.
His masterpiece was his definitive life of Benjamin Disraeli. In my obituary of him for the Royal Society of Literature I wrote, ‘Then in 1966 came Disraeli, a sublime book that stands as a beacon, a model and a reproach to all British biographers and historians. When historians set out to write significant books on important biographical subjects, there can be no better advice to them than to read Robert Blake’s Disraeli.’ I re-read that without blushing, if anything, I think it is almost an understatement. I couldn’t therefore be more delighted to hear Faber Finds are reissuing it in May. And for them also to be reissuing The Conservative Party from Peel to Major, The Unknown Prime Minister, Disraeli’s Grand Tour and The Decline of Power, 1915-64 is the most wonderful bonus.
The Disraeli biography and The Conservative Party are already available with the others to follow. Faber Finds is politically neutral, if that doesn’t sound too feeble, and when it comes to historians we only want to reissue the best regardless of their hue: Robert Blake, A. J. P. Taylor, Norman Gash (to come), Michael Foot , G. M . Trevelyan (to come), Correlli Barnett (to come), Kenneth Morgan. I hope those names indicate the balance and quality. And let’s not forget Andrew Roberts himself. We are about to reissue his great biography of Lord Salisbury with the apt subtitle: Victorian Titan. Perhaps it is fitting to quote Robert Blake:
‘Andrew Roberts has filled one of the great gaps in Victorian historiography. This is the first authoritative life of the statesman who dominated politics from 1885 to 1902 . . . A brilliant biography that will long replace anything which has appeared before.’
If you think that is too cosy, try Niall Ferguson:
‘Roberts triumphantly retrieves Salisbury from unmerited obscurity with a book as delightful to read as it is informative.’
If you are still not convinced I can tell you it was the winner of both the Wolfson History Prize and the James Stern Silver Pen Award for Non-Fiction. Indeed, as a political biography it is on a par with Blake’s Disraeli and Norman Gash’s Robert Peel (to be reissued next year).
The Place for Lost Books 