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    Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill 1832
    Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill 1832
    Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill 1832
    Audiobook11 hours

    Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill 1832

    Written by Antonia Fraser

    Narrated by Mike Grady

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    Internationally bestselling historian Antonia Fraser's book brilliantly evokes one year of pre-Victorian political and social history - the passing of the Great Reform Bill of 1832, an eventful and violent year that featured riots in Bristol, Manchester and Nottingham.

    The time-span of the book is from Wellington's intractable declaration in November 1830 that 'The beginning of reform is beginning of revolution' to 7 June 1832, when William IV reluctantly assented to the Great Reform Bill, under the double threat of the creation of 60 new peers in the House of Lords and the threat of revolution throughout the country. Wider themes of Irish and 'negro emancipation' underscore the narrative.

    The book is character driven; we learn of the Whig aristocrats prepared to whittle away their own power to bring liberty to the country, the all-too-conservative opposition who included the intransigent Duchess of Kent and Queen Adelaide and finally the 'revolutionaries' like William Cobbett, author of Rural Rides. These events led to a total change in the way Britain was governed, a two-year revolution that Antonia Fraser brings to vivid dramatic life.

    "A writer whose command of sources, eye for detail, perception of character and shrewd judgment enable her to bring the past truthfully to life" ( Sunday Telegraph)

    "Drama, betrayal, religion and sex, it's all here, adorned by often fascinating, at times esoteric detail" ( Guardian)

    "Fraser brings to life the female stars circling the Sun King in an account that successfully combines erudition with gossipy stories of the kind the Versailles courtiers loved so much." ( Sunday Times)
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd
    Release dateMay 7, 2013
    ISBN9781471232510
    Perilous Question: The Drama of the Great Reform Bill 1832
    Author

    Antonia Fraser

    Antonia Fraser is the author of many widely acclaimed historical works which have been international bestsellers. She was awarded the Medlicott Medal by the Historical Association in 2000 and was made a DBE in 2011 for services to literature. Her previous books include Mary Queen of Scots; King Charles II; The Weaker Vessel: Woman's Lot in Seventeenth-Century England, which won the Wolfson History Prize; Marie Antoinette: The Journey; Perilous Question; The King and the Catholics; and The Wives of Henry VIII.  Must You Go?, a memoir of her life with Harold Pinter, was published in 2010, and My History: A Memoir of Growing Up  in 2015. Fraser's The Case of the Married Woman is available from Pegasus Books. She lives in London. 

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    Reviews for Perilous Question

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    • 4/5
      A charmingly written history of a too-overlooked period in modern political history: the early 1830s debate over the Great Reform Bill, to expand the British electorate and reform the "rotten boroughs." Fraser ably tells the story of this clash, with conservatives fearing that concessions would undermine Britain's timeless constitution and threaten revolution, while reformers thought that Reform was the only way to head off that revolution. (Also covered, to a lesser extent, are the activists who thought that some revolutionary change was just what Britain needed.)

      The first parts of the book can feel like one capsule biography after the other, of aristocratic British lords and MPs with a tendency to blend together. But Fraser has a lively pen and an eye for good anecdotes that keep things moving even when the exposition threatens to overwhelm the narrative. Accessible for general history fans as well as specialists, and recommended.
    • 4/5
      Bit confusing. You can see she's a historical biographer, rather than a full-blown historian, in that there are neat pen portraits of a thousand characters, major and minor, but we are left short on analysis of the underlying issues and there's some lack of clarity about the process of getting the Great Reform onto the statute book. for example, if the Whigs are just as much landed grandees as the Tories, why are they keener on reform? Do they see the storm clouds of revolution more clearly, or are they more idealistic? Or a mix of both? How real was the threat of revolution anyway? What were the people threatening disorder expecting to get: votes for themselves ?
    • 4/5
      The Great Reform Act brilliantly brought to life by Antonia Fraser. The characters and complexities of the reform process are laid out very well and there is a lively pace to the book to maintain interest throughout.
    • 4/5
      Interesting read about the debates and politicing around the reform of voting in the UK in 1832. It's interesting to see how complicated the thinking about it was. Getting rid of some of the rotten boroughs (as parodied wonderfully in the Third Blackadder series); increasing the voting and changing the landscape of UK voting. It was an interesting read and brought forward some of the thinking of some people of the time.Worth reading to see more of the just-pre-Victorian era. You could see where some of the politics and policies of the Victorian era came from
    • 5/5
      Once Again Lady Antoni Fraser has produced a fine informative yet eminently accessible book. Having studied this period during my A Levels more than thirty years ago I was intrigued to see how she would handle this material. The answer is that she brought it all vividly to life!On the face of it, a history of the passage of the Great Reform Act on 1832 might sound a somewhat arid subject, but Lady Antonia weaves a fascinating story from the dry proceedings. Constitutional reform was certainly badly needed at the start of the 1830s. While infamous rotten boroughs such as Old Sarum (deserted since 1217) returned two MPs to Westminster, flourishing industrial cities such as Birmingham and Manchester, with populations numbered in tens of thousands, were unrepresented. The ballot for those lucky few who were enfranchised was public, and often the subject of severe intimidation at the hands of landlords and employers.This situation had pertained for centuries, with little inclination within those on the inside to change anything. However, 1830 saw both another revolution in France, with Louis Phillipe being crowned "King of the French" in an early experiment with constitutional monarchy, and the death of King George IV, succeeded by William IV. The juxtaposition of these two significant developments acted as a catalyst to change. As had happened following the first French Revolution in July 1789, fears of similar unrest sweeping across the Channel bedevilled English politicians, and there was indeed a spate of rural uprising, taking the form of the Captain Swing raids, with landlords seeing their property laid waste by masked rioters. The English stiff upper lip would not encompass florid demands for "Liberté, Egalité or Fraternité", but a cohesive campaign for reform did emerge.Lady Antonia's portrayal of the principal protagonists - Lord Grey (Whig Prime Minister), the Duke of Wellington (Tory leader and confirmed Anti-Reformist), and the King himself - are clearly drawn, and she deftly elicits empathy for all their conflicting views.Of course, looking back from a twenty-first century perspective with far greater (if still far from ideal) constitutional parity it is difficult to see what all the fuss was about. After all, though there was frequent reference to "Universal Suffrage", at the time no-one, women included, made any attempt to have this term taken to include representation for women. Such an idea was simply laughable in 1932. But even though the franchise was widened a little bit, it still remained alarming narrow, and those few who were lucky enough to be allowed to enter suddenly became stalwart opponents against any further relaxation! Yes, the worst excess of the rotten boroughs were adressed, but the path to a state even vaguely resembling universal suffrage would still be a long time coming.I would be very keen to read Lady Antonia's musings on the subsequent Reform movements, too!