A splendid biography, which deals justly and fairly with all the controversies of Gladstone’s life … It is a notable achievement and will not be easily superseded.
The Times
Roy Jenkins has written many good books. This is his best. It is beyond praise.
- Vernon Bogdanor, Evening Standard
Inspired by affection for his tremendous subject, the author has scaled the heights with panache … [Jenkins’s] evident delight in the man and his story carry the reader along as though on the crest of a wave.
- Claire Tomalin, Independent on Sunday
Jenkins is a master of irony … This helps to make the book enormous fun to read, while it is also enlightening in any number of ways.
- John Grigg, Sunday Telegraph
Deliciously spiced with mordant wit, <i>Gladstone</i> can be read for sheer pleasure. But it is the wisdom as well as the wit that ensures this biography will live on.
Guardian
This biography matches one of Gladstone’s own towering performances.
Sunday Times
The combination of author and subject makes Roy Jenkins’s <i>Gladstone </i>irrestistible … His biography is all you need to know about Gladstone including the things you never dared ask.
Independent
Roy Jenkins has written the definitive biography of William Ewart Gladstone, the 'Grand Old Man' of Victorian politics. Jenkins is a consummate biographer … <i>Gladstone </i>is his <i>chef-d’oeuvre.</i>
Daily Express
As befits the heroic grandeur of its subject, this is an admirable proportioned and beautifully written book, by turns enthralling, moving and (sometimes) very funny . . . It is the best single volume biography of a Victorian statesman since Robert Blake's like of Disraeli. What higher praise can there be?
- David Cannadine, Observer