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The third marquess of Salisbury has received a lot of attention as a domestic politician over the last 15 years.’ Even so, continuing interpretative difficulties remain in assessing his career as conservative ideologue and leader. First, historians remain uncertain about the relationship between his early journalism and speeches, and the actions of the mature politician after 1881. Second, there is still no agreement about how far Salisbury understood the contemporary changes in British socio-political culture, and from which he and the Conservative party were to take the principal advantage. Third, there is also no consensus on whether Salisbury should be seen as a driving and creative force in Conservative politics, or whether he and his party were the lucky beneficiaries of the towering, but ultimately misguided, moral energies of W.E. Gladstone. As a result, Paul Smith, in the most recent authoritative interpretation, leaves the reader to choose between Salisbury as a cautious materialist dedicated to delaying the new democratic order, or as a risk-taking opportunist prepared to play for the highest stakes and winning, or as just a lucky political leader at the right place at a propitious moment.

Gladstone, Whiggery and the Liberal Party, 1874–1886. By T. A.Jenkins. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1988. vi, 328 pp. £32.50. The Gladstonian Turn of Mind: Essays Presented to J. B. Conacher. Edited by Bruce L. Kinzer. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1985. xv, 294 pp. £35.00. Gladstone, Home Rule and the Ulster Question, 1882–93. By James Loughlin. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. 1986. 369 pp. No price given. Parliamentary Politics and the Home Rule Crisis: The British House of Commons in 1886. By W. C. Lubenow. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1988. vii, 389 pp. £37.50. The Gladstone Diaries with Cabinet Minutes and Prime Ministerial Correspondence, Volume IX, January 1875-December 1880. Edited by H. C. G. Matthew. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1986. xcvii, 714 pp. £55.00. Parnell and the First Home Rule Episode, 1884–87. By Alan O'Day. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. 1986. x, 314 pp. £25.00.

In the past historians of the Anglo-Irish union have concentrated largely on the leading political figures. Peel, O’Connell, Gladstone, Parnell, Salisbury, Redmond, Asquith and Lloyd George and their Irish policies have all received detailed attention. For the years following the onset of the great agricultural depression, this tendency has been inevitably reinforced by the turmoil of politics following the Third Reform Act and Gladstone’s attempt to introduce home rule for Ireland.