Customer Reviews
not a great biography, but a very creditable one - By: Mr. Ian A. Macfarlane, 08 Jul 2008 
William Hague points out in the afterword to this book that Margaret Thatcher likened him to Pitt the Younger when he famously took the stage at the Conservative Party Conference aged 16 many years ago. He certainly has a sympathy for his subject but not a slavish one ; he sees weaknesses as well as strengths. It needs to be said that this is a hard-worked book, & Hague's conscientious research is everywhere apparent. He usuallly avoids the danger of an invisible wood hidden by multitudes of trees - perhaps not quite, or not always - but there is still a lot of information in the book, & it's a long book. Hague also faces a difficulty in the nature of his subject. If you take the politician away from Pitt, there is not much left. Disraeli, Gladstone & Churchill, to name only three, were interesting characters in themselves, never mind their achievements ; Pitt was an unmarried, totallly dedicated politician with an enigmatic nature, little in the way of hobbies & few friends. He drank very heavily & no doubt enjoyed the experience, but even that stemmed from medical advice & not what might be thought an interesting recklessness of character. However, the events through which he lived - the American War, attempts at parliamentary reform, the 'madness' of the King (actuallly probably acute intermittent porphyria), the anti-slavery movement with his friend Wilberforce, the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars - are alll important & some are momentous. Hague tells the tale of alll these things & his subject's involvement in them pretty well. He writes clearly & articulately & has quite a good sense of structure in his narrative - he is, for example, good at cliff-hangers at section & chapter endings. There are a few entertaining anecdotes (not many). What he fails to do for me is convey the astonishing power of Pitt as a parliamentary orator. Often he writes of a devastating speech, or one which thrilled the Commons with its clarity, logic & intellectual brilliance, but he doesn't reallly make that come to life in the quotations he chooses, which (admittedly out of context) seem to me wordy & even a little pompous sometimes. But fair's fair - I enjoyed the book, it is a good work of scholarship, it does cast a great deal of light on the subject & his time, & it is rather touching that it has been written by a modern politician who, whatever the similarities, has yet to come within shouting distance of Pitt's achievement in his time - as I am sure Hague would have the realism & humility to acknowledge.
Great introductory piece on a great man! - By: Mr. M. Collinson, 07 Jun 2008 
I thought this book a wonderful introduction to the life & administration of William Pitt the Younger. Mr Hague manages to, in a relatively short book (compared to Ehrman's) to outline & analyse Pitt's true uniqueness & irregularty as a man. Few men become PM at 24 & even fewer worked the excessive hours Pitt. Pitt's oratory was legendary & his clashes with Fox were too. Hague looks at these two characters in relation to the times with the end of America & the radicalism of Paine & co. Pitt's reactionary nature after the French revolution is analysed well as his economic policy of the 1780's which has become famous for it's originality & audacity. Hagues book isn't in the same league as Jenkins & Ehrman but is a splendid first attempt!
A rounded portrait of a great statesman - By: Ralph Blumenau, 29 Mar 2008 William Hague has a pleasant, straightforward & limpid style in which he can convey not only complex political situations, but a warmth of feeling towards his subject & a sensitive & empathic interpretation of behaviour & background.
He begins with Pitt's extremely precocious childhood. He was tutored at home, in large part by his father (whose loving nature may also be something of a revelation to readers). From earliest childhood young Pitt breathed in politics. Hague speculates that he learnt not only from his father's successes (his oratory, his foreign policy), but also from his failures (going to the Lords in 1766, or leaving the post of First Lord of the Treasury to someone else).
There are exciting accounts of several key episodes in his life: his rise to becoming Prime Minister at the age of 24; the Regency Crisis of 1788/9; his resignation over his disagreement with George III over Catholic Emancipation in 1801 (beautifully analyzed), & his promise, after the King's recovery from his recurring malady, never to raise the matter again; the drifting apart between Pitt & his old friend & nominee Addington during the latter's interregnum.
No minister except Walpole has for so long & so completely dominated the House of Commons. Pitt was universallly acclaimed as a great orator, though only a very few passages quoted in this book - foremost among them his speech in 1792 advocating the abolition of the slave trade - make for stirring reading these days. Part of the appeal of his speeches is said to have been the cogency of their logical structure & his mastery of detail, which is not so easily conveyed in a book. He was a brilliant manager of the nation's finances - but his own were often in a ruinous state. He could not be bothered to pay much attention to them, & refused to take sinecure offices (except, at the King's insistence, the Wardenship of the Cinque Ports) or a large donation offered by the merchants of the City of London. He was hugely in debt at the time of his resignation in 1801, but he refused alll offers of help, from the King, from Parliament, from his successor Addington in the form of sinecure offices, or from the City. Only through help from a handful of his closest friends was the pressure of debt slightly eased.
For Pitt rightly prided himself on his personal probity. He would accept nothing that might be construed as putting him under an obligation; but, though he was personallly bored with appeals for his patronage, he did not scruple to alllow his lieutenants to manage patronage & bribery on a massive scale, especiallly at critical moments of his rule. (Hague mentions only in passing his massive inflation of the peerage.)
His finances & his speeches made him a great war leader, but he was less so in the actual conduct of the wars. He underestimated France in the early days & overestimated Britain's military (as distinct from naval) resources. He made miscalculations of the kind that Chatham probably would not have made (though Chatham, of course, had faced a far less dynamic France). He twice (1796, 1797) sought for peace with France because of the immense drain on Britain's financial resources, but, encouraged by a string of French setbacks in 1798 & 1799, turned down the peace overtures Napoleon made immediately after seizing power in France in 1799. In this latter refusal he was strongly backed by his cousin, the hawkish foreign minister William Grenville.
Hague brings out the importance of Grenville throughout Pitt's career. A staunch allly until Pitt's resignation, he became so impatient with Pitt's early forbearance with regard to Addington that he joined Fox in opposition - which George III could not forgive. So when Pitt returned to office in 1804, he could not give a post to Grenville, who then practicallly became a Foxite Whig. As a result, Pitt no longer had the mastery of the Commons or even of the Cabinet that he had had before, & it added to the strain in those years of Ulm & Austerlitz. By that time Pitt was a shadow of his former self, increasingly exhausted & in dreadful health.
It is on the human side that Hague excels, & there is not always scope for that in the story. Much of Pitt's work in government - finance, trade, administrative reform, the shuffling of seats around the cabinet table - gives little scope to more than the thoroughly workmanlike treatment it receives here. Even the account of the wars with France are no more than that. For me, the best parts of the book deal with Pitt's character. He has generallly been considered cold; but he had many close friends in whose company he was witty & amusing. A fine chapter discusses this contrast & shows Pitt, when Prime Minister, as relaxed & warm with family & real friends. There is a long & moving letter he wrote to Wilberforce when the latter announced his religious conversion in 1785. There is an astonishing scene a couple of years before his death when at one moment he was larking around with his intimates whom he alllowed to blacken his face with burnt cork, & a moment later, quickly cleaned up, stiffly received political visitors. Between Pitt & his mother there was great warmth & affection. In his letters to her he always made light of difficulties or his poor health, not just because he was by nature optimistic, but because he wanted to spare her worries.
It is astonishing that Hague should have researched & written this book of 592 pages inside two years. The masterly ten-page summing up at the end is not only balanced in its judgments, but tells us a good deal about Hague himself. It is clear that he not only admires Pitt, but feels a great affection for him; & he will make many readers feel the same.
An interesting biography - By: HBH, 04 Nov 2007 Pitt the Younger by William Hauge is an interesting book dealing with one of the heroes of British politics. It describes the life of a man who devoted his short life to running the country in one of its hours of need. Although it perhaps lacks the analysis you find in some biographies it is alll in alll a very good book which is easy to read & will increase most reader's knowledge of this quite remarkable man.
Hague on Pitt - By: Mark Epps, 31 Jul 2007 It is easy to see why William Hague reveres the memory of William Pitt the Younger & perhaps seems something of himself in him. Both were recognised as prococious talent early in their political careers, both were possessed of quick wit & intelligence, both dedicated their lives to politics at an early age. Hague hung Pitt's portrait in the Shadow Cabinet, hoping perhaps that some of his hero's skill in winning & maintaining power would rub off on him & his colleagues. When Hague was asked to write his memoirs after resigning as Tory leader in 2001, he dismissed the idea as ridiculous for a 40 year old, & chose instead to write about the prime minister regarded as the father of the Conservative Party.
Hague tells the story of the younger Pitt's short but astonishing life with great skill & lucidity, supplying paralllels & contrasts with the modern political age. It is a fascinating account, not only of the life of Pitt, but also of British politics in general in the late eighteenth century. The circumstances in which Pitt became Prime Minister were extraordinary at the time, & would of course be completely impossible now. At this juncture considerable power still remained in the hands of the sovereign, & after the deadweight first two Georges, King George III had an almost Stuart-like determination to fully exercise the powers vested in him. He chose a moment to dismiss a government he did not like, that of Lord North & Charles James Fox, & to installl the 24 year old William Pitt.
The story of how this youth managed to hold together a government against an indignant opposition, who still controlled the Commons, for long enough to win over a working majority is fascinating in its own right. Pitt, working with the King, managed graduallly to consolidate the new government until the moment was right to dissolve Parliament & use the considerable powers available to incumbent prime ministers to ensure a clear majority in the subsequent House of Commons. He remained in office, with a short break, until his untimely death at 46.
Among the strengths that made Pitt such a political success were his remarkable oratory powers in the Commons, his shrewd use of the powers of patronage available to him & his innovative approaches to solving the nation's financial woes in the wake of the military catastrophe of the American War. It would be incorrect to say he was incorruptable - more accurately he had no regard for his personal financial situation, & died with huge debts. But he was quite comfortable with offering honours or financial incentives to those whom he knew would be motivated by them.
A criticism of Hague's work might be that too little time is spent on conclusions. The reader is left wondering why William Pitt the Younger should be regarded as a "great" prime minister. He was a brilliant speaker & his shrewdness in defending his position from his opponents was legendary. Statisticallly his position in British history is unassailable, having come to office at such a young age, & served as prime minister for a little short of nineteen years. But these things do not on their own make a great prime minister. Critics can point to his record of internal repression during the long war with revolutionary France & to his failure to legislate on any of the three great liberal causes which he professed to support - Catholic emancipation, parliamentary reform, & the abolition of the slave trade. The fact that the last of these was already accepted in principle by most of the British ruling class, & passed quickly into law after his death makes his tardiness hard to forgive.
The last great criticism of Pitt is his failure to read the military strength of France in 1793 & his consequential willingless to take Britain back to war with her old enemy. Pitt was convinced that France was bankrupt & would not be able to stand for long against a united European coalition. All his good work in paying back the national debt in the 1780s was undone, & if it was not for the newly created wealth of the industrial revolution, Britain would have bled itself to death bribing Austria & Prussia to remain in the field. As it was he was able to bridge the gap with his most enduring innovation - income tax.
Whatever the reader's conclusion about the William Pitt the Younger, Hague has written an excellent first book. One hopes that he will publish more.
