The Unknown Gladstone

‘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 sexual turmoil over his nocturnal meetings with prostitutes. But this is unfair. Herbert had an important, and in many ways creative, public life, where he served in important positions at home and overseas. He made his own major contribution to the triumphs of the Liberal Party in its late - Victorian and Edwardian high noon, especially in the electoral landslide of 1906. Kenneth Brown’s biography (only the second such) therefore should be commended for a richly documented and lucidly written account of most of its major features

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