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.

Furthermore, John Murray believed that Disraeli had caricatured him and abused his confidence – an accusation denied at the time, and by the official biography, although subsequent biographers ( notably Blake ) have sided with Murray.

Disraeli wrote a personal letter to Gladstone, asking him to place the good of the party above personal animosity: " Every man performs his office, and there is a Power, greater than ourselves, that disposes of all this ..." In responding to Disraeli Gladstone denied that personal feelings played any role in his decision then and previously to accept office, while acknowledging that there were differences between him and Derby " broader than you may have supposed.

As Disraeli remarked, " I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole.

These visits enabled him to meet and take the measure of his adversaries Napoleon III, and the British Prime Minister Palmerston and Foreign Secretary Earl Russell, and also of the British Conservative politician Disraeli, later to be Prime Minister in the 1870s – who later claimed to have said of Bismarck's visit " Be careful of that man – he means every word he says ".

They long were idolized, but historians in recent decades have become much more critical, especially regarding Disraeli.

The Whig Sir Charles Wood and the Tory Disraeli had both been perceived to have failed in the office and so this provided Gladstone with a great political opportunity.

Though the banker initially refuses to help, Disraeli forces him to sign a paper giving unlimited credit to Myers by threatening to have Parliament revoke the bank's charter.

Previous Chancellors have opted for whisky ( Kenneth Clarke ), gin and tonic ( Geoffrey Howe ), brandy and water ( Benjamin Disraeli ), spritzer ( Nigel Lawson ) and sherry and beaten egg ( William Gladstone ).

David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, named Disraeli as his favourite Conservative and some commentators and MPs have suggested that Cameron's ideology contains an element of one nationism.

Disraeli justified his ideas by his belief in an organic society in which the different classes have natural obligations to one another.

Before he became leader of the Conservative Party, Disraeli had announced that, as a result of the Reform Act of 1867 which had enfranchised the male working class, the party needed to pursue social reforms if it was to have electoral success.

; 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.

His choice of title might have been partly influenced by the fact that in 1794 the conservative political philosopher and parliamentarian Edmund Burke, whom Disraeli admired, had turned down King George III's offer to raise him to the peerage as Lord Beaconsfield.

In a speech in favour of the government bill for a rate in aid ( a tax on the prosperous parts of Ireland that would have paid for famine relief in the rest of that island ) in 1849, he won loud cheers from both sides, and was complimented by Disraeli for having sustained the reputation of that assembly.

" 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.

It is decorated as it might have been at the time it was occupied by Disraeli.

' Castle Bromwich Post Office ' was the first to have a telephone outside London so that Benjamin Disraeli could keep in touch with the government.

The influence of Benjamin Disraeli may have had some effect on this change, but it was in the main due to the altered politics of the middle and commercial classes, to which the Jews chiefly belonged.

The time period that Disraeli chose was dominated by the Whig party ; there would have been little opportunity for a young, rising Tory.

Many of his other works have also been translated into English, as they often dealt with British people or topics, such as his biographies of Disraeli, Byron, and Shelley.

Lowry-Corry was thus brought up in close touch with Conservative party politics, but it is said to have been his winning personality and social accomplishments rather than his political connections that recommended him to the favorable notice of Benjamin Disraeli, who in 1866 made Lowry-Corry his private secretary.

A house which stood on the site since the late 17th century is said to have been the birthplace of Isaac D ' Israeli ( father of Benjamin Disraeli ) and later to have become a school, where John Keats was educated.