Bücher von Patrick Jackson

This biography covers both the literary and political career of John Morley, later Lord Morley of Blackburn (18381923). As a writer, Morley made his reputation as the radical editor of The Fortnightly Review from 1867 to 1882. This was an influential periodical for which Morley commissioned articles by writers such as Leslie Stephen and Frederic Harrison, and for which Morley wrote many articles himself. As a politician, Morley worked very closely with William Ewart Gladstone, particularly in the two attempts to introduce legislation providing for Irish home rule, with a Dublin parliament. Finally, at the end of his political career, Morley served as secretary of state for India (1905-1910) in the great Liberal government of Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith. Working with the viceroy Lord Minto, Morley was responsible for the first tentative steps toward a democratic government in India. Morley was strongly opposed to militarism: he had stood out against the war with the Boers in South Africa and he resigned from office in 1915 in protest against the declaration of war on Germany. This biography utilizes extensive primary archival material, including Morleys own diaries and letters, which have only recently become available.

When he died in 1934 Edward Elgar had become a national institution, but his musical creativity was long over. This fictional memoir, supposedly written in 1934, takes us back to the years before 1914 when the composer's reputation was at its peak. It tells the story of two young men who went to Hereford as pupils of George Sinclair, the cathedral organist and one of the friends immortalised by Elgar in the 'Enigma Variations'. They find that the composer, ill at ease in the circles to which his socially ambitious wife aspires, enjoys relaxing in the company of young people.Apart from the light thrown on the personality of Elgar, the memoir evokes the atmosphere of a pre-war cathedral city. It is also a love story of an unusual kind.