Disraeli and Bentinck and Personal and Political Relationship in History and Memory

Benjamin Disraeli has long been the source of wonder and examination for the academic world. Indeed, is now perhaps the most discussed nineteenth-century politician. His political practices, ideas and writings have been extensively mined to come up with a coherent understanding of his life and career. He has for so long been understood in relation to the contemporary allegation that he was an adventurer, opportunist, and man of few political principles. A man apart from his parliamentary colleagues who distrusted and disliked him. A view largely cemented by the formidable professional histories of the 1960s. More recent works on Disraeli have explored his ideas on race, empire and his own Jewish identity. This work attempts to move away from those valuable contributions to once again explore Disraeli’s politics and political thought. It is all too easy to lose the bigger picture. It would have been quite impossible for a metropolitan, middle-class, Jewish novelist dandy and parvenu to climb to the top of British politics, where he stayed for over thirty years without both political principle and a extraordinary ability to collaborate. Therefore, this work attempts to re-establish Disraeli in his own contemporary context. An Englishman and a thorough-going Tory, who rather than being different or apart from his colleagues, was a first-rate political collaborator.