The life of one of the greatest British Prime Ministers - by an author who knows the scene from his years as a senior Minister in Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet. Robert Peel (1788-1850), as much as any man in the nineteenth century, transformed Great Britain into a modern nation. He invented our police force, which became a model for the world. He steered through the Bill which allowed Catholics to sit in Parliament. He reorganised the criminal justice system. Above all he tackled poverty by repealing the Corn Laws. Thanks to Peel the most powerful trading nation chose free trade and opened the door for our globalised world of today. Peel was not all politics. He built two great houses, filled them with famous pictures and was devoted to a beautiful wife. Many followers never forgave him for splitting his Party. But when in 1850 he was carried home after a fall from his horse crowds gathered outside, mainly of working people, to read the medical bulletins. When he died a few days later, factories closed, flags flew at half-mast and thousands contributed small sums to memorials in his honour. He was the man who provided cheap bread and sacrificed his career for the welfare of ordinary people.

Sir Robert Peel provides an accessible and concise introduction to the life and career of one of the most political leaders of the nineteenth century. Perhaps best known for seeing through the Repeal of the Corn Laws, Peel had an enormous impact on political life of his age and beyond. Eric J. Evans reassesses Peel's career, arguing that although Peel's executive and administrative strengths were great, his arrogance, lack of empathy with the development of political parties and his inflexible commitment to economic liberalism presented political problems which he was incapable of solving. This expanded and fully revised second edition: fully engages with the extensive new historical work on Sir Robert Peel published since the first edition appeared fifteen years ago includes a glossary of key terms plus an updated and expanded bibliography, including listing useful websites. Sir Robert Peel is the perfect introduction for all students of nineteenth-century history.

Sir Robert Peel - paragon or pariah? Peel was the greatest statesman and political leader of mid-Victorian Britain, a titan of Conservative politics, whose legacy has inspired generations in his party and in British political life. In a career spanning forty years he held the greatest offices of state including Chief Secretary to Ireland, Home Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer and was twice Prime Minister. He was the first acknowledged leader of the Conservative Party and the Founder of Modern Conservatism. Yet Peel's seemingly peerless reputation has never been secure. The Repeal of the Corn Laws split his party, his 'Peelite' supporters joined the Liberals and the Conservatives remained in opposition for thirty years. Richard Gaunt, drawing on a huge archive of state papers, contemporary writings including Peel's own Memoirs and the latest historiography, paints a convincing picture of Peel as an exponent of effective government in the modern industrial state and a calculating practitioner, supremely self-confident, who dominated both his Party and the House of Commons. Gaunt's revisionist life of Peel will be essential reading and the standard work for students and general readers interested in Conservative and mid-Victorian political history and historical biography.

Norman Gash's magnificent two-volume life of Sir Robert Peel - Mr Secretary Peel (1961) and Sir Robert Peel (1972) - is the standard work on the great statesman, and is widely considered one of the great biographies of nineteenth-century prime ministers. Faber Finds is delighted to return both to print. In this second volume, Gash focuses on the years between 1830 and 1850, the height of Peel's political career, which included his two terms as prime minister, the controversial repeal of the Corn Laws, and his reform of the Conservative Party. 'In ... his masterly biography, covering Peel's career from the Reform Crisis to his untimely death in 1850, Professor Gash shows himself not merely an admirer but an emulator - brilliant intellect, master of detail, man of conservative but humane conscience.' Harold Perkin, Guardian 'Norman Gash's Sir Robert Peel shows how high and austere academic writing about a major figure is compatible with an outstanding general biography.' Roy Jenkins, Observer 'In Mr Secretary Peel, the first volume of this biography, he provided a rich and perceptive portrait of a statesman in the making. Now at last he has completed one of the great biographies of our time.' Philip Ziegler, Daily Telegraph 'Sir Robert Peel by Norman Gash ranks with the great political biographies of the past, a classic work in both scholarship and presentation.' A. J. P. Taylor, New Statesman

Sir Robert Peel dominated political life for more than two decades and has been described as the 'founder of modern conservatism.' This book analyzes the career of Sir Robert Peel in relation to the development of the Conservative Party in the early 19th century. It discusses Peel's conception of Conservatism, and his work as Prime Minister.

The name 'Bobby' comes from Sir Robert Peel who, as home secretary, oversaw the creation of the Metropolitan Police in 1829. In spite of his position as a national institution and his appeal as a solution to present-day concerns about law and order, the social history of the Bobby has rarely been explored. Yet his story (and since the beginning of the twentieth century it is also her story) is as exciting as that of his military cousin, Tommy Atkins. Bobby served on the front line of what is often characterized as 'the war against crime.' He may rarely have fought in pitched battles and almost never with lethal weapons, but his life could be hard and dangerous. Up until the last third of the twentieth century he usually patrolled on foot, in all weathers by day and, more often, by night. The drudgery of the foot patrol fostered that other nickname, 'Mr Plod'; something that may, or may not, have passed Enid Blyton by when she chose the name for the policeman of Noddy's Toytown. The period covered by The Great British Bobby saw massive economic, social and political change in Britain. The policing institution has shifted significantly in tandem, from having its primary relationship directly with the decentralized, local community, to becoming an instrument of the central state with, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, targets set and regulated centrally for the good of what politicians and policing professionals consider as the national community. Criminological expert Clive Emsley is ideally placed to tell the story of this remarkable and iconic institution; his book is nothing less than a social history of Britain over the last 180 years.

Norman Gash's magnificent two-volume life of Sir Robert Peel - Mr Secretary Peel (1961) and Sir Robert Peel (1972) - is the standard work on the great statesman, and is widely considered one of the great biographies of 19th-century prime ministers. Faber Finds is delighted to return both to print, beginning with Mr Secretary Peel. As Gash puts it memorably, 'Peel, born in 1788 in the world of Gibbon and Joshua Reynolds, of stage-coaches, highwaymen and the judicial burning of women, died in 1850 in the age of Faraday and Darwin, of Punch, railway excursions, trade unions and income tax...' Over the course of Peel's life Britain was remodeled, and it may be argued that Peel himself did more than any other political figure in reconciling the new forces in society with its older institutions. But as a politician Peel could be a controversial figure, his pragmatism pressing him into unpopular decisions. The son of an industrial millionaire, his instincts were for the cause of good government over narrow party interest. Norman Gash interpreted Peel as the intellectual founder of the modern Conservative Party - an aristocratic administrator and natural consensus politician who believed in courting the urban middle class as well as landowners and farmers. Mr Secretary Peel carries its subject's story from birth through his entry into politics in Ireland, his early positions in Tory governments, his tenure as Home Secretary from 1822 (which included his establishing of the Metropolitan Police Force) and up to the struggles over the issue of Catholic Emancipation. 'A rich and perceptive portrait of a statesman in the making,' Philip Ziegler, Telegraph.

The repeal of Britain's Corn Laws in 1846, one of the most important economic policy decisions of the 19th century, has long intrigued and puzzled political scientists, historians, and economists. This book examines the interacting forces that brought about the abrupt beginning of Britain's free-trade empire.