Volume 44, Number 5 · March 27, 1997
God's Choice
By Ian Buruma
Gladstone: A Biography
by Roy Jenkins
Random House, 698 pp., $35.00
Jimmy Carter was not the first statesman to fret about 'lust in his heart.' In 1849 William Ewart Gladstone confessed to the same sin not in a popular magazine, but in his diary. His imagination was easily inflamed. Reading an anthology of medieval French poems was enough to make him commit 'adultery in the heart.' A rich fantasy life is not all Gladstone had in common with Carter. Like the American ex-president, Gladstone felt the heavy hand of his Maker in pretty much everything he thought and did. And the least one can say about him is that he thought and did a very great deal.
Review, 5349 words
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