Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian

Review\n"A gem of a book: entertaining, wry, and gloriously eccentric."
― Sebastian Mallaby, Foreign Affairs\n"Bagehot was a financial journalist with a love of English literature and a facility for clear and cogent prose. So is Mr. Grant.… Bagehot is a terrific and efficient survey of the political and economic disputations of mid-Victorian England."
― Barton Swaim, The Wall Street Journal\n"Very enjoyable… Grant demonstrates that he has the measure of a fascinating―and great―Victorian."
― John Plender, Financial Times\n"Lively.… Entertaining."
― John Lanchester, The New Yorker\n"James Grant [is] one of the most influential contemporary commentators on Wall Street.… In Grant’s hands, Bagehot’s life and career provide a superb prism through which to observe the extraordinary revolution in the British economy during the 19th century."
― Simon Nixon, The Times (London)\n"Excellent."
― Benjamin Schwarz, The New York Times Book Review\n"The most perceptive and brilliant economic and political writer of his time deserves a biographer of equal literary merit. In James Grant, Walter Bagehot has found him."
― Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England and author of The End of Alchemy\n“Excellent… and written in a gripping style.” ―The Economist
During the upheavals of 2007–09, the chairman of the Federal Reserve had the name of one Victorian icon on the tip of his tongue: Walter Bagehot. Banker, man of letters, and inventor of the Treasury bill, Bagehot prescribed the doctrines that―decades later―inspired the radical responses to the world’s worst financial crises. Persuasive and precocious, he was also the esteemed editor of the Economist. He offered astute commentary on the financial issues of his day, held sway in political circles, made as many high-profile friends as enemies, and won the admiration of Matthew Arnold and Woodrow Wilson. Drawing on a wealth of historical documents, correspondence, and publications, James Grant paints a vivid portrait of the banker and his world.