Disraeli climbed the greasy pole by defending the very culture that had shut Jews out – and himself peddled antisemitic ideas in his fiction
One of the defences offered during the recent controversy over antisemitism within the Labour party was an insistence that anti-Jewish racism was always, in fact, a Tory problem. A vivid and illuminating new biography of Benjamin Disraeli – published as part of Yale’s Jewish Lives series and one of the last two works by the much-admired historian David Cesarani, who died aged 58 last year – provides corroborating evidence on almost every page.
Related: Mr & Mrs Disraeli review – a thoroughly modern marriage
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