William Gladstone, four-time PM

0:00Trevor Lyttleton:This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.

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1:47Trevor Lyttleton:This is the story of an elderly man who moved 32 ,000 books from his home to a library. The distance, over half a mile, he used a wheelbarrow. The library opened in December 1895, by which time the man was 85. His name? William Gladstone, also known as the Grand Old Man, still the only politician to enter Downing Street as Prime Minister four times. I'm amazed no one's picked him before, but here with us today is Trevor Littleton, MBE, head for 50 years now of a charity dedicated to the care of the elderly. It's called Re-Engage. And boy, did Gladstone re-engage. Welcome, Trevor, to Great Lives.

2:34Trevor Lyttleton:Tell us about your love for this man and its connection with your charity. Well, let me start with a single fact that still astonishes me, that when he returned as Prime Minister for the fourth time, as you mentioned, the average life expectancy was 40. He became Prime Minister at 82, which is the modern equivalent of a 100-year-old man, and not as a figurehead, but as one of the most mentally astute and energetic leaders the cent country had ever had. And that is the Gladstone who's inspired me. And for 60 years, while working to bring companionship and purpose to thousands of lonely older people, I've seen how powerful it is when older people remain active and engaged.

3:22Trevor Lyttleton:This isn't just a campaign to support older people. It's to do with loneliness, isn't it? Exactly. I started in Maryland, but not very far from here, in my 20s, and I decided to help lonely elderly people in the area. And a group of us got together with a tea party, and it started in London. And then Jack D 'Amanio, the day programme, interviewed me in this very building, and he said, why don't you do something outside London? And then it started in Yorkshire and elsewhere in Scotland and became a nationwide charity. and when I retired in 2015, we had 8 ,000 volunteers helping a similar number of elderly people at 600 tea parties a month.

4:06Trevor Lyttleton:You noticed at that first tea party that loneliness was a big problem of old age. Is that right? Correct. Yes. He showed that late age can be the summit. I think it's his energy that has actually influenced a lot of people outside of his background politically, and I think it's an interesting aspect that's been neglected. How much do you know about his life? Are you a Gladstone expert? I'm not an expert, but I've read the Roy Jenkins biography, and that, I found it very, very powerful. I thought it was very appropriate that this subject should be brought home to people who want to become active and involved.

4:51He personally drove the Home Rule Bill through the house, delivered long forensic speeches, mastered details younger ministers struggled with, and he worked late, rose early, read Greek. Yes. But what's amazing about him is that his intellectual life ran beside while he was Prime Minister. He translated the Horace Odes into English verse. He debated classical meter with younger scholars. He wrote major theological works, including The Impractical Rock, defending Christianity against criticism, and he kept a vast reading diary. But physical stamina, as you mentioned, in his 80s, walking 15, 20 miles a day, chopping down trees, climbing hills abroad, outpacing younger companions and maintaining a very strict discipline.

5:48It leaves me breathless just to hear of what he did.

5:54Trevor Lyttleton:Everyone knows that Queen Victoria didn't like him. She much preferred his Tory rival, Disraeli, and we'll explore that. But there's so much to Gladstone's life that it's going to be impossible to cover the whole life and we only have about 28 minutes. So I've made a decision, and that is to focus on his beginnings, who he was, where he came from, his early life, and then move pretty swiftly on through his middle years as Chancellor and Prime Minister to Gladstone the Old Man, where hopefully we can pick up the story again and ask about the continuity between the young man and the old man. If everyone's OK with that, well, let's just see how it goes.

6:37Trevor Lyttleton:With us to help in that task is Dr Ruth Winchafel from York St John University. Welcome to Great Lives. Where was Gladstone born, Ruth? Tell us about his very early days. Gladstone was born in Liverpool in 1809, a vintage year, really. You also get Darwin and Tennyson and other great Victorian loomeries born in that year. He was born to two Scottish people, John Gladstone and Anne. They had moved down mainly because of John's mercantile interests and his political ambitions. So Gladstone was born in a smart house not far from the centre and from where the two cathedrals now are. And he had a very long memory, actually.

7:28He records in a later passage of autobiography remembering being held up in Rodney Street while George Canning was at the house and speaking. Aged something ridiculous like two. so he's very much pre-Victorian obviously interests in trade, in money and in politics.

7:49Trevor Lyttleton:Did he think of himself as a Scot? Because he was completely Scottish. By ancestry he was completely Scottish, yes. Gladstone spends a lot of time there wandering the hills tries to get involved in country sports but he doesn't like killing anything and ends up shooting the top of his own finger. This is the father, John? No, this is William. So William spends time there. But he grows to really reconnect with his Scottish heritage. Would you call his childhood happy? Yes. We ought to talk a little bit about his family's business. You said they were merchants. The role in the slave trade shouldn't be overlooked.

8:29Trevor Lyttleton:One of his descendants, Charlie Gladstone, recently went to Guyana. It is with deep shame and regret that we acknowledge our ancestors' involvement in this crime, he said. Without that plantation money, William Gladstone's early life and education would probably have been completely different, wouldn't it? There's no question about that. His life would have been different in terms of the advantages that his father could pay for. John Gladstone supported him financially for the best part of his first 30 years. Of course, they're looking at abolition in 1833. About half his assets are in slave-related property.

9:13Trevor Lyttleton:What do you think, Trevor? Does any of this matter? They all have imperfections and flaws. Every politician does somewhere. Yes. And I think one has to judge the great things that they stand for. And as I said, for me and for older people, his example in old age of strength, physical energy and intellectual energy and get up and go is something remarkable. Yes, I agree. But if your upbringing, your education, your whole start in life is owed to some very great evil that your family were involved with, do you think it doesn't matter at all? Do you think it did matter to Gladstone? I think one has to accept it as a reality, but I don't think you can blame him for that.

10:01He benefited by it and he paid back. He was a great struggler for freedom and freedom of expression in many ways. And he highlighted the Armenian massacres at the age of 86. And he was always active and engaged in actually expressing himself on religion. and sometimes at the same time as he was running the country. And I think he deserves credit for that. He didn't shy away from what the money had done for him. He acknowledged that this was a, as he called it, an awful subject, a solemn and awful subject. Maybe I'd defer to you on this, Matthew, but to be a successful politician you have to have a measure of pragmatism in your approach.

10:47And as a young politician and a young man, he wanted to defend his father.

10:53Trevor Lyttleton:Yeah. And that wasn't the same thing as defending slavery. But I guess with a life as long as his and as a politician, you kind of have to choose your causes and your battles. He did later call slavery the foulest crime in our history. Yes, he did. And I think he becomes more and more aware of public opinion and actually how politicians have to engage with the public. They don't just have to talk at them. They have to listen. And I think you do see that. It's more obvious in some of his other campaigning. He doesn't ever really depart from the position of, well, yes, slavery was an evil. It did need to be abolished.

11:40But likewise, the planters who'd sunk all this money in, I still believe that they needed to be compensated for it.

11:49Trevor Lyttleton:Where was he educated, Ruth? He was educated at Eton. He spent time with tutors and crammers and just sort of getting ready to go off to Eton. Obviously his family being pretty much self-made, it wasn't a route that was wholly familiar to them as a family. Eldest son Tom had gone with mixed results. William Wendt, very successful. He loved it, loved the debating, progressed on to Christchurch, Oxford, where he read classics, maths and physics, and got a multiple first in all of them. Clever boy. He was, yes. I guess you both know, we all know what Gladstone looked like, but I've got two very striking photographs here.

12:36Trevor Lyttleton:I'll give you, Ruth, the photograph of him as a younger man and Trevor, perhaps you would describe the photograph I'm just handing to you here. It's an old man sitting in a chair in his shirt with a book. He also has an axe, doesn't he? Aha, yes, he's been chopping down trees, absolutely. No, this is Gladstone just sitting down and taking a breather after chopping down trees in Harden. It's from 1877, I think, and in Harden, yes. Posing for the cameras. And the much younger man that you're looking at there. Yes, well, this looks like an engraving based on a photograph. Victorians were mad for carte de visite and photographs that could be bought and exchanged and left as calling cards for people.

13:29And this is a formal portrait of Gladstone in frock coat pointed collar, something which later cartoonists would pick up in caricatures of him. And find facial hair, no moustache or beard.

13:44Trevor Lyttleton:A very distinctive sort of cut face, hasn't he? Yes, yes. In both photos, really. Yeah, very much so. The lines of his face are very strong. He took after his father in that respect. As a young man, his heart was set on being a clergyman and his father wouldn't have it. So in a way, we're looking at the two defining characteristics, both of the younger man and perhaps of the whole life. One, this prosecuting intellect, but the other, this deep sense of moral purpose. Is that fair, Trevor? Absolutely. I think his moral purpose was probably inspired by the various subjects you're talking about, about his embarrassment, about the slave trade.

14:28I think he sought redemption by the way he led his life.

14:33Trevor Lyttleton:Ruth, Trevor, either of you, when did he begin really to stand out from the crowd, to shine? Did he have obvious abilities from the start? I think so. When he went into Parliament, as I mentioned, his main interests were talking about colonial interests, colonial trade, as per his father's own interests. But it was quite quickly picked up on that he had financial acumen, he was good with figures, He had a forensic mind for detail, and this was observed by his peers, but also those who had the power to promote him, principally Robert Peel. Now, you mention Robert Peel, and Gladstone did start, not everybody knows this, as a Tory, yet he later joined the Liberals.

15:24Trevor Lyttleton:In a nutshell, if it's possible to do anything about Gladstone, in a nutshell, how did that come about? Was he a proper Tory? Well, was he a proper Tory? In some ways, the Tory party left him. That's what politicians always say. Yes, but I think there is some truth in this. I don't think he really abandoned that early Victorian liberal Toryism. We associate with Peel the free trade and the liberal approach to government as opposed to the protectionism that Disraeli and others increasingly represented. And that was very much an anathema to Gladstone. You're listening to the great life of William Gladstone, conservative turned liberal politician and still the only man to become prime minister four times.

16:16Trevor Lyttleton:In a moment, we're going to move to the older Gladstone, the grand old man of British politics. But what about Gladstone in his private life? We have sort of two sides of his private life. He was married, happily married, we suppose. To whom was that? He was married to Catherine Glynn, who was from a minor Welsh aristocratic family from North Wales, from Hardin, which is where Gladstone took up residence in later life. So wife and children, but then in Downing Street, Trevor, he used to bring fallen women into Downing Street. Yes. What for? Well, he believed in redemption. and that was a very strong motivation for this and he felt that it was something that he had to do.

17:04Trevor Lyttleton:Yes, but I mean if a modern politician was to be found with a prostitute in Downing Street and say he was trying to redeem her, they'd get short shrift, wouldn't they? I don't think there's any evidence that he did anything else, but it was well known. It would not have been well known. It would have been covered up in those days had it not been the case, I would have thought. But Ruth, he scourged himself after these meetings. He did. Just to clarify, so he, in addition to his political evolution, you also see a religious evolution as well. And during the 1840s, he starts attending meetings of a high church brotherhood called the Engagement.

17:46And each of these members had to take on a work of charity. Yeah. And he chose to engage in the rescue of fallen women. His wife, Catherine, was also involved in Houses of Mercy.

18:01Trevor Lyttleton:So why did he scourge himself? So he engages in rescue work, but he starts questioning himself whether in fact he's doing it for charitable purposes or indeed there are other impulses there as well. So he's worried that he's thinking bad thoughts. He was very worried that he was getting rather overexcited, I think, at times. And he spent considerable lengths of time with some of these women. He got a bit obsessed with some of them, to the extent that he did indeed occasionally take them into Downing Street to view the pictures. I mean, that doesn't sound good. Come up and see my pictures. Well, it doesn't sound great, does it?

18:42But also he, we've talked about his love of reading. Yes. He would sit and read Tennyson for hours, it sounded like hours on end. So he'd put this in his diary. He would often write it in Italian so nobody else could read it, he hoped. And then went on a 20-mile walk. Yes, well, if not that. But he did put a symbol in the diary showing that if he felt that his mind had not been on the task at hand, that he would scourge himself. But that was, of course, practice quite common amongst these high church figures of that period. So it wasn't just Gladstone that was taking this approach. There were others who...

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21:05Trevor Lyttleton:Now let's raise our eyes from the unfortunate women and take the most enormous leap. We've established him as a clever young man. We've established him as a young Tory politician, a follower of Peel, peeling away from the Conservative Party, ending up as leader of the Liberal Party. and he's back now as the Liberal leader again and a Whig Prime Minister. This is from a book about Gladstone and Israeli by Richard Aldous. The Prime Minister had begun to show his age, it reads, when he reached his 70s. Never a snappy dresser, he had recently come to look positively dishevelled. His eyesight was failing and his back increasingly stiff.

21:51Trevor Lyttleton:From this point on, he could add a new complaint. He had been unable to sleep. Chronic insomnia would dog him for the rest of his life. You sympathise, Trevor. Well, no, I don't suffer from insomnia, but I must say the amount of productivity he produced does suggest that he didn't sleep very much. Yes, exhaustion actually can make it hard to sleep. I saw that with Mrs Thatcher. Well, yes, yes, exactly. Insomnia starts at a time when he's under tremendous. pressure as a politician, but also in his private life as well. It's a culmination of various blows that he has to take in his midlife. He loses his father.

22:40Peel dies as well. There's the acceleration of the rescue work we've just been talking about. So combining all those things, it's not surprising he didn't sleep.

22:51Trevor Lyttleton:Trevor, I think you're interested in his final government of 1892. Gosh, my grandmother was born by then when he was already into his 80s. But before we get there, I just want to talk about two issues. They've been mentioned, his public campaign against the so-called Bulgarian atrocities, and then his attempts to gain home rule for Ireland. Just tell us very briefly about those two things, the atrocities and home rule. OK, so Gladstone himself had purportedly retired from political life in 1874. He'd been chucked out. But he was tempted back by, again, getting really engaged and excited by ideas.

23:36And the Eastern question, as it was referred to, the spats that took place between Turkey and Russia, so the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire, increasingly attracted both political and journalistic comment. And he starts this campaign. He writes a famous pamphlet, The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East. A surprising success, I would have to say. Why is anyone interested? Well, I think it's a question of, I suppose, not just the reading public, but how journalists whip up campaigning. You've got some key figures involved in this that were organising speeches.