WHAT PRICE THE VOTE?
Antonia Fraser turns the spotlight on one of the most volatile periods of nineteenth century British political history with a twist turning narrative that grips the reader from start to finish.
The 1832 Reform Act may have been a constitutional watershed but getting it onto the statute books would divide the establishment and bring the country to the edge of revolution. Fraser skilfully gets beneath the skins and into the minds of some of the key protagonists in the struggle including the reforming Whig aristocrat Lord Grey, the obstinate war hero and deeply conservative Prime Minister the Duke of Wellington (his 1830 declaration that “as long as he held any station in the government of the country he would always feel it his duty to resist such measures” was a major fuse in triggering events), and the so called “Radical Tailor” Francis Place.
The book takes the reader through a complex political landscape with the humour, detail, and keen-eyed observations that have made Antonia Fraser one of Britain’s most successful historical authors. An electoral system that withheld the vote from industrial centres like Sheffield and Manchester, but which allowed rotten boroughs like Old Sarum (“a lump of stone and a green field”) to return two MPs, was clearly unsustainable yet the road to change would be dramatic and often violent.
This is historical writing at its very best. Fraser’s excellent research has produced a classy, engaging work that reads like a superb political thriller.
Reviewed by Juliette Foster
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