Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, KG, PC, FRS, ( 21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881 ) was a British Prime Minister, parliamentarian, Conservative statesman and literary figure.

In this feud, Disraeli was aided by his warm friendship with Queen Victoria, who came to detest Gladstone during the latter's first premiership in the 1870s.

In 1876 Disraeli was raised to the peerage as the Earl of Beaconsfield, capping nearly four decades in the House of Commons.

Before and during his political career, Disraeli was well known as a literary and social figure, although his novels are not generally regarded as a part of the Victorian literary canon.

His father groomed him for a career in law, and Disraeli was articled to a solicitor in 1821.

In 1824, Disraeli toured Belgium and the Rhine Valley with his father and later wrote that it was while travelling on the Rhine that he decided to abandon the law: " I determined when descending those magical waters that I would not be a lawyer.

The paper was a failure, in part because the mining " bubble " burst in late 1825, which ruined Powles and Disraeli.

Before he entered parliament, Disraeli was involved with several women, most notably Henrietta, Lady Sykes ( the wife of Sir Francis Sykes, 3rd Bt ), who served as the model for Henrietta Temple.

It was Henrietta who introduced Disraeli to Lord Lyndhurst, with whom she later became romantically involved.

" Further, at the time Gallomania was published, Disraeli was in fact electioneering in High Wycombe in the Radical interest.

The other great party, the Whigs, was anathema to Disraeli: " Toryism is worn out & I cannot condescend to be a Whig.

Though he initially stood for election, unsuccessfully, as a Radical, Disraeli was a Tory by the time he won a seat in the House of Commons in 1837 representing the constituency of Maidstone.

Although a Conservative, Disraeli was sympathetic to some of the demands of the Chartists and argued for an alliance between the landed aristocracy and the working class against the increasing power of the merchants and new industrialists in the middle class, helping to found the Young England group in 1842 to promote the view that the landed interests should use their power to protect the poor from exploitation by middle-class businessmen.

Although Disraeli forged a personal friendship with John Bright, a Lancashire manufacturer and leading Radical, Disraeli was unable to convince Bright to sacrifice principle for political gain.

" Looking on from the House of Lords, the Duke of Argyll wrote that Disraeli " was like a subaltern in a great battle where every superior officer was killed or wounded.

" If the remainder of the Conservative Party could muster the electoral support necessary to form a government, then Disraeli was now guaranteed high office.

Disraeli spoke in favour of the measure, arguing that Christianity was " completed Judaism ," and asking of the House of Commons " Where is your Christianity if you do not believe in their Judaism?

" While Disraeli did not argue that the Jews did the Christians a favour by killing Christ, as he had in Tancred and would in Lord George Bentinck, his speech was badly received by his own party, which along with the Anglican establishment was hostile to the bill.

Bentinck, then still Conservative leader in the Commons, joined Disraeli in speaking and voting for the bill, although his own speech was a standard one of toleration.

Even as these intrigues played out, Disraeli was working with the Bentinck family to secure the necessary financing to purchase Hughenden Manor, in Buckinghamshire.

The first opportunity for the protectionist Tories under Disraeli and Stanley to take office came in 1851, when Lord John Russell's government was defeated in the House of Commons over the Ecclesiastical Titles Act 1851.

This confused arrangement ended with Granby's resignation in 1851 ; Disraeli effectively ignored the two men regardless.

With Gladstone's refusal Derby and Disraeli looked elsewhere and settled on Disraeli's old friend Edward Bulwer-Lytton, who became Secretary of State for the Colonies ; Derby's son Lord Stanley, succeeded Ellenborough at the Board of Control.

That is the doctrine not merely of Peel, of Disraeli, of Salisbury, and Chamberlain ; it is the doctrine of Gladstone ; it is the doctrine of Cobden ; it is the doctrine of Bright ; and it is the doctrine of Campbell Bannerman ... It is the doctrine of all the great Liberal leaders of the past and present ".

This is the second time this has occurred ; Stafford Northcote lived in Number 10 at one point, while Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli occupied Number 11.

* Disraeli ; allmovie. com

This was based in the feudal concept of noblesse oblige, which asserted that the aristocracy had an obligation to be generous and honourable ; to Disraeli, this implied that government should be paternalistic.

; 1833: Benjamin Disraeli, then 28 years old, writes The Wondrous Tale of Alroy about David Alroy's messainic mission to Jerusalem

; 1851: Correspondence between Lord Stanley, whose father became British Prime Minister the following year, and Benjamin Disraeli, who became Chancellor of the Exchequer alongside him, records Disraeli's proto-Zionist views: " He then unfolded a plan of restoring the nation to Palestine – said the country was admirably suited for them – the financiers all over Europe might help – the Porte is weak – the Turks / holders of property could be bought out – this, he said, was the object of his life ...." Coningsby was merely a feeler – my views were not fully developed at that time – since then all I have written has been for one purpose.

The Disraelis died without direct heirs and their titles became extinct ; Hughenden Manor passed to Lord Beaconsfield's nephew Coningsby Ralph Disraeli.

Samuel Warren attacked him as Venom Tuft in Ten Thousand a Year ; and Disraeli aimed at him partially in Ste Barbe ( in Endymion ), though the satire here was directed primarily against Thackeray.

Disraeli was a Jew, as are many of the neoconservatives who helped transform the Republican Party from a cocktail party in Darien into the party of Scalia, d ' Souza, Gonzalez, and Yoo ... Conservatism has not only depended upon outsiders ; it also has seen itself as the voice of the outsider ... the conservative has served as the tribune for the displaced, his movement a conveyance of their grievances.

" Figures often beguile me ," he wrote, " particularly when I have the arranging of them myself ; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: ' There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Benjamin Disraeli, later to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, stayed there for a month in September – October 1845 and wrote in a letter to his sister Sarah that he considered it " an extremely savage place ; few of the inhabitants, & none of the humbler classes, talk French, there is no library, bookseller's shop, nor newspaper of any sort ...

Lady Beaconsfield died in 1872, and Disraeli in 1881 ; both were buried in a vault adjacent in the churchyard of St Michael and All Angels Church which is situated downhill from the main house, to the east.

Disraeli had no children ; he left Hughenden to his nephew, Coningsby.

Consequently, the bill was more far-reaching than any Members of Parliament had thought possible or really wanted ; Disraeli appeared to accept most reform proposals so long as they did not come from William Ewart Gladstone.

However, Gladstone attacked the bill ; a series of sparkling parliamentary debates with Disraeli, resulted in the bill being much more radical.

In February of the next year, before the Act came into force, Gladstone's Liberal Government fell ; the Conservative Benjamin Disraeli became Prime Minister.

On 26 July 1858, Lionel de Rothschild was finally allowed to sit in the British House of Commons when the law restricting the oath of office to Christians was changed ; Benjamin Disraeli, a baptised Christian of Jewish parentage, was already an MP.

In 1884 Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild became the first Jewish member of the British House of Lords ; again Disraeli was already a member.

He was born at 52 Doughty Street, London, 29 April 1816, and after his earlier education was articled, on 24 April 1832, to his uncle, Mr. Charles Sabine of Oswestry, for the term of five years, and passed the Incorporated Law Society's examination in November 1838, but there is no record of his ever having become a solicitor ; for the natural bent of his genius impelled him, like Dickens and Disraeli, to lighter studies, and he forsook law for literature.