Tuesday 8 March 2011

"Pitt the Elder: Man of War" by Edward Pearce

I have never read a biography in which the biographer liked his subject so little. Pitt/ Chatham is portrayed as a vainglorious, often arrogant warmonger who had not infrequent periods when he was just bonkers. He fought with everyone and changed his politics to whatever was going to win power. Portraying himself as 'The Great Commoner' he soon took a title for his wife and later one for himself. Banging on about his moral stance of never profiting from office, he accepted a £3,000 per annum sinecure. One moment he was trumpeting everlasting opposition to the King, the next he was a Minister of the Crown. He was pompous, boastful and self-obsessed. Despite cultivating an image of the great war-leader in the Year of Victories, the true victors were quiet unassuming generals and admirals and men who crafted a brilliant Navy. The only bits of the war that Pitt took a direct hand in were failures.


I didn't really enjoy this book. Pearce often tries to explain a situation by comparing it with a modern political situation. This is a brilliant idea. But often these explanations are obscure, at least to me and I am not the worst read member of the public, and so they serve just to emphasise the breadth of Pearce's scholarship.

March 2011; 346 pages

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