AGM followed by a Lecture – The ‘Asian Mystery’:  Benjamin Disraeli and the Poet in Politics

At Magdalen College Auditorium, Longwall St

Refreshments and raffle from 10.20am;  AGM at 10.45am;  Lecture at 11.10am.  All welcome! Members £5, non-members £6

Benjamin Disraeli was the most unlikely prime minister of the nineteenth century.  A Jew, a novelist and a failed poet, he rose to the leadership of the Tory Party while upturning all the social conventions of his day.  Critics called him “the Asian mystery”;  he himself boasted of having “an Oriental mind”; and his great rival, Gladstone, thought him a dictator in the making. 

This talk by Dr Robert Saunders, Reader in British History at Queen Mary University of London, explores the life and career of one of Britain’s most colourful and controversial prime ministers, assessing the origins of Disraeli’s politics, his impact on the nineteenth century and his legacy for later generations.