William Pitt the Younger by William Hague

An understanding of Pitt's extraordinary political precocity requires us to appreciate the unusual circumstances of a family so wholeheartedly committed to political life. On his mother's side, that of the Grenville family, one uncle was in the House of Lords, and two others were in the Commons, one of them to be First Lord of the Treasury by the time the infant William was four years old.

His father, twenty-five years an MP, was now the leading Minister of the land. On his father's side, his great-grandfather, grandfather and uncle had all been members of Parliament. It would scarcely be possible to imagine a more intensely political family than the one into which William Pitt was born on. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. With its rich cast of characters, including Charles James Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Edmund Burke, and George III himself, and set against a backdrop of industrial revolution and global conflict, this is a richly detailed and rounded portrait of an extraordinary political life. He describes how a man dedicated to peace became Britain’s longest-serving war leader, how Pitt the liberal reformer became Pitt the author of repression, and how–though undisputed master of the nation’s finances–he died with vast personal debts. By seeing him through the eyes of a politician, William Hague–a prominent member of Britain’s Conservative Party–succeeds in explaining Pitt’s actions and motives through a series of great national crises, including the madness of King George III, the impact of the French Revolution, and the trauma of the Napoleonic wars. Though he was generally thought to be cold and aloof, his friends described him as the wittiest man they ever knew. Pitt’s personality has always been hard to unravel. No British politician since has exercised such supremacy for so long. Yet within months he had outwitted his opponents, and he went on to dominate the political scene for twenty-two years (nineteen of them as Prime Minister).

The brilliant son of a father who was also Prime Minister, Pitt was derided as a “schoolboy” when he took office. In this lively and authoritative study, William Hague–himself the youngest political party leader in recent history–explains the dramatic events and exceptional abilities that allowed extreme youth to be combined with great power. William Pitt the Younger is an illuminating biography of one of the great iconic figures in British history: the man who in 1784 at the age of twenty-four became (and so remains) the youngest Prime Minister in the history of England.

William Pitt the Younger by William Hague