Perilous Question: Reform or Revolution? Britain on the Brink, 1832 - Softcover

Fraser, Lady Antonia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1610393783 ISBN 13: 9781610393782

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2014

Synopsis

Antonia Fraser's Perilous Question is a dazzling re-creation of the tempestuous two-year period in Britain's history leading up to the passing of the Great Reform Bill in 1832, a narrative which at times reads like a political thriller.

The era, beginning with the accession of William IV, is evoked in the novels of Trollope and Thackeray, and described by the young Charles Dickens as a cub reporter. It is lit with notable characters. The reforming heroes are the Whig aristocrats led by Lord Grey, members of the richest and most landed cabinet in history yet determined to bring liberty, which would whittle away their own power, to the country. The all-too-conservative opposition was headed by the Duke of Wellington, supported by the intransigent Queen Adelaide, with hereditary memories of the French Revolution. Finally, there were revolutionaries, like William Cobbett, the author of Rural Rides, the radical tailor Francis Place, and Thomas Attwood of Birmingham, the charismatic orator. The contest often grew violent. There were urban riots put down by soldiers and agricultural riots led by the mythical Captain Swing.

The underlying grievance was the fate of the many disfranchised people. They were ignored by a medieval system of electoral representation that gave, for example, no votes to those who lived in the new industrial cities of Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, and Birmingham, while allocating two parliamentary representatives to a village long since fallen into the sea and, most notoriously, Old Sarum, a green mound in a field. Lord John Russell, a Whig minister, said long afterwards that it was the only period when he genuinely felt popular revolution threatened the country. The Duke of Wellington declared intractably in November 1830 that "The beginning of reform is the beginning of revolution." So it seemed that disaster must fall on the British Parliament, or the monarchy, or both.

The question was: Could a rotten system reform itself in time? On June 7, 1832, the date of the extremely reluctant royal assent by William IV to the Great Reform Bill, it did. These events led to a total change in the way Britain was governed, and set the stage for its growth as the world's most successful industrial power; admired, among other things, for its traditions of good governance--a two-year revolution that Antonia Fraser brings to vivid dramatic life.

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Review

Antonia Fraser creates gorgeous portraits of the landed aristocrats, who fought for the Great Reform Bill of 1832. It is a remarkable story told by an excellent storyteller. (David Aaronovitch THE TIMES)

Fraser's rollicking history... brisk engrossing narrative..... as a pure storyteller she has few equals (Dominic Sandbrook SUNDAY TIMES)

Antonia Fraser's superb narrative of the passing of the Great Reform Bill of 1832, one of the most potentially revolutionary moments in British politics, provides incisive pen portraits of all the major protagonists. (DAILY TELEGRAPH)

Britain, 1832. The 'perilous question' of the country's corrupt electoral system - is causing uproar. From the complacent Prime Minister, to radicals calling for revolution, Fraser expertly sketches the key players in a dramatic period of British history. (HISTORY REVEALED)

...in her usual elegant style Antonia Fraser recounts the furore over constitutional reform as a thrilling adventure story. (Jad Adams BBC HISTORY MAGAZINE)

Antonia Fraser's sheer stamina - she is now in her eighties and a national institution - is an object lesson for younger historians. The clear joy and fascination she continues to feel for her subject shine through. (Lucasta Miller OXFORD REVIEW)

The book take the reader through a complex political landscape with the humour, detail and keen-eyed observations that have made Fraser one of the country's most successful historical authors. In fact, this is historical writing at its best because it actually reads like a superb political thriller. (SURREY LIFE)

A political thriller - Borgen in the era of Middlemarch... It is a remarkable story told by an excellent storyteller, with a flair for character and a rare sympathy for context. (David Aaronovitch THE TIMES -book of the week)

This is history as it should be written: lively, witty and, above all, a cracking good read. I found it almost impossible to put down. (Jane Ridley THE SPECTATOR)

Not a typical summer blockbuster, but Fraser's analysis of the years preceding the Great Reform Act of 1832 is a rollicking good read, with rakish revolutionaries and reforming heroes (VOGUE)

The 1820s and early 1830s have all too often been seen as a historical backwater between the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the start of the Victorian era that began with the queen's accession in 1837. With Fraser's erudite and acute portrait of this age of reform, it won't be thought so anymore. (Andrew Roberts SUNDAY TELEGRAPH)

Her deft pen portraits and gift for dramatic narrative had me on the edge of my seat, even though I know the plot backwards (Boyd Hilton LITERARY REVIEW)

Antonia Fraser's vivid account is particularly strong on characters (Kwasi Kwarteng EVENING STANDARD)

Brisk and engrossing...Her book is a mine of juicy details, not all of the familiar. Until 1832, Britain's democracy was so ramshackle and corrupt that while Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds had no MPs at all, the rotten borough of Old Sarum, which consisted of "a lump of stone and a green field", had two. (Dominic Sandbrook SUNDAY TIMES)

You could almost be reading a novel as the reforming Whigs take on the Conservative opposition aided by a cast of revolutionaries like William Cobbett. (Theo Walden THE LADY)

Fraser deftly charts the parliamentary brinkmanship - including the Prime Minister threatening to drown the Tory opposition in the House of Lords in a flood of newly created Whig peers - that finally brought victory to the Reformists, and nationwide celebrations at the passage of the legislation in 1832. (John Adamson MAIL ON SUNDAY)

This, then, was probably the closest we ever got to full-blooded revolution, and Fraser describes it all with gusto. As she says in her introduction, we know the Reform Bill will pass, but the people who fought for it did not. And the people are the meat and drink of this story...It all makes for a rich landscape, a gripping tale and another fine book from one of our best popular historians. (Marcus Berkmann DAILY MAIL)

She is a knowledgeable guide, spicing her narrative with vivid sketches of the anxieties of individuals involved, from the kings dismay at the indiscretions of Queen Adelaide to Lord Grey's grief at the death of his little grandson, the "Red Boy" of Thomas Lawrence's portrait. Such details give humanity and vigour to the story of one of the most important moments in British history. (Sue Gaisford FINANCIAL TIMES)

Written with colour, pace and learning, Fraser's history of the Great Reform Bill of 1832 and its rocky passage into law speaks clearly to politics today. The country, eager for even this limited increase in the franchise, was thwarted for months by a diehard Westminster elite. The people did prevail - in the end. (i NEWSPAPER)

This is popular history of a very high order. Elegantly written, lavishly illustrated and deftly argued, it is a brilliant and entertaining evocation of a turning point in British history...In Antonia Fraser, the "perilous question" has found an apt chronicler, who may yet rescue the Reform Bill from the gross amnesia of posterity. (Robert Saunders TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT)

What I don't remember from school is how thoroughly entertaining it was. What a slice of human drama, how tense, how crucial and how very nearly it could have foundered, thereby propelling our nation into riot and revolution. For that we need impeccable historian Antonia Fraser, who invests such humanity in her huge cast of characters. (Jennifer Selway DAILY EXPRESS)

Lady Antonia (who was created a Dame in 2011 for services to literature) can be relied upon to build her story around personalities, and to portray them so skillfully that the reader becomes totally absorbed in their fortunes. (John Ure COUNTRY LIFE)

This is one of Antonia Fraser's very best books, well up to the standard of her admirable life of Cromwell and her gut-wrenchingly brilliant life of Marie Antoinette. When you have read it, you will not only have grasped all the twists and turns of one of the great parliamentary adventures of history, you will also feel as if you have spent the most entertaining week at a Whig house-party. (Ann Wilson THE TABLET)

An engaging account of those turbulent times (CATHOLIC HERALD)

Antonia Fraser's wonderfully vivid, authentic and impeccably sourced account of the passage of this bill paints a picture of tempestuous times when a disenfranchised people, struck by poverty, chose reform in Parliament as their placard. (Giles Broadbent WHARF.CO.UK)

Fraser's book is worth reading to get an overview of the revolutionary upsurge which led to the passing of the 1832 Great Reform Bill. (The Newsline)

Antonia Fraser relates these events with tremendous verve, admirably describing the exuberance and fury stirred up by Reform and explaining complex issues with exemplary clarity. (Anne Somerset STANDPOINT)

Perilous Question is a cracking good read and should be on every parliamentarian's summer reading list. (TOTAL POLITICS)

The bill was finally passed after a titantic two year struggle. Antonia Fraser's work transforms our understanding of it. This is the best history book I have read so far this year. (Lord Lexden THE HOUSE MAGAZINE)

Antonia Fraser is one of the most readable historians writing today, and her aim is to be accessible to those who enjoy history but are not necessarily academics. She does a wonderful job here, describing and explaining the events surrounding the Great Reform Bill of 1832, which was Britain's belated response to the events of the French Revolution. It was far from perfect in terms of how many more people received the vote, but it almost certainly avoided a full-blooded insurrection. (GOOD BOOK GUIDE)

This is a wonderful Westminster thriller, played out by characters both heroic and irredeemably crass. Fraser draws them all with her usual deft hand and dramatic instinct. (Dan Jones THE TIMES)

This is the brilliant history and storytelling we always expect from Fraser - impossible to put down. (Kate Williams BBC HISTORY)

A country divided, perhaps on the brink of revolution; a parliament rich with political intrigue, orotund speeches and ripe characters - the Reform crisis of the 1830s is a story waiting for a popular retelling. (THE OLDIE)

From the first paragraph Fraser renders it a compelling drama with a cast of characters as awful, marvellous, duplicitous, self-seeking and public spirited as any that Dickens invented. The parallels with today are glaring and the lessons still only partially learned, the consequences as yet not fully redeemed. The brilliance of Fraser is that she sees everything first in human terms - this is history made by people for people and it's the people that dance, posture and rise with a moving grandeur off the page. (AA Gill NEW STATESMAN)

Documenting powerful change, the author brings to life an exciting chapter of history which divided a nation (DISCOVER BRITAIN)

Antonia Fraser's PERILOUS QUESTION succeeds in making a gripping read out of the political crisis of the Great Reform Bill. Lord Grey - the idealistic older statesman with his tight-fitting white pantaloons - emerges as an unexpected hero. (Jane Ridley THE SPECTATOR)

a lively story of human drama and political intrigue (DAILY TELEGRAPH)

Book Description

The two-year revolution that totally changed how Britain is governed.

Edition details

• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1610393783
• ISBN 13: 9781610393782
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 352