William hague pitt the younger5/31/2023 ![]() ![]() Compared to previous multi-volume biographers he is a model of succinctness, but like all his predecessors he faces two huge challenges: the complexity of 18th-century English politics and the repressed frostiness of a man bred for high office from birth (Pitt was generally thought to be cold and aloof). Aside from the obvious advantages of sympathy and intelligence, he brings to his first book a precocious grasp of parliamentary procedure. ![]() Like his subject, he is still famously young: the teenage star of a Tory party conference, he became the youngest cabinet minister, aged 34, under John Major. William Hague addresses Pitt's life with some formidable advantages. As much a legend in death as in life, he passed away with not one ('My country, oh! My country!') but two ('I think I could eat one of Bellamy's veal pies') attributed last lines. He was also the author of a domestic repression that achieved one of the greatest infringements of liberty ever perpetrated on the British people. In office, he steered his country through a series of national crises: the madness of King George, the French Revolution and, finally, the rise of Napoleon. ![]()
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