Rosebery: Statesman in Turmoil

The Fifth Earl of Rosebery was the most glamorous Liberal politician of the late Victorian age. As a young man, he said that he had three ambitions: to marry an heiress, win the Derby, and become Prime Minister. By his mid-forties, he had achieved all three. But his political career was clouded by his strange, mercurial character. Self-centred, impulsive, and neurotic, he mixed a desire for prestige with extreme sensitivity to any criticism. After retiring from the Liberal Leadership in 1896, he became an increasingly solitary, brooding figure, wandering restlessly from one of his mansions to another. Using a wealth of archival material, award-winning author Leo McKinstry reveals the contradictory personality behind the magnetic public figure.