Given that he was three times prime minister, a key figure in the emergence of the Conservative party, scion of a great English family, and the leading proponent of the Second Reform Act, it is strange that fate has led the current biographer of Lord Derby to label him “the forgotten prime minister.” Yet as he was eclipsed by two leading Conservative contemporaries, Robert Peel and Benjamin Disraeli; was a premier for only short periods, in 1852, 1858–59, and 1866–68; and attracted accusations of political disinterestedness, it is perhaps little wonder that he has been “forgotten.” It is a situation, however, that Angus Hawkins, author of several studies of mid-nineteenth-century politics, has set himself the task of correcting, beginning with this first volume of a projected two-volume biography. Covering the formative years of Derby's political life, during which he was known as Lord Stanley, this meticulously researched work challenges the popular image, largely the product of Derby's later years, casting him instead as a politically ambitious and highly principled aristocrat-politician who straddled, with various degrees of success, the nexus of parliamentary combinations at a time when party alignment was in a continuous state of flux.

Derby was raised a devout Christian, and his formal education at Oxford was augmented by the tutelage of Whig grandee Lord Lansdowne. As a result, Derby believed sincerely in the Whig conception of an enlightened aristocracy and reconciled this easily with his strong commitment to the established church of England and Ireland. Understanding this helps to explain his subsequent political career, which at first glance appears replete with contradictions, and which made him and his followers a key bloc in the bewildering array of projected combinations that might form a government.

Derby's political education continued after his election as member of Parliament for Stockbridge in 1822. A visit two years later to the United States confirmed him as an opponent of slavery. Immediately afterward, he began an annual trip to his family's estate in County Tipperary, learning of Irish conditions firsthand and practicing the role of responsible landlord. His strong affinity for Ireland and commitment to parliamentary reform helped earn him a place in Lord Grey's reform ministry of 1830. As Chief Secretary for Ireland he steered through Irish Church reform and established the National Schools.

Derby nevertheless remained wedded to protecting the Protestant Ascendency, which earned him the animosity of Daniel O’Connell and led in 1834 to a rupture with the Whigs over his reluctance to support the reform of tithe payments, something Derby felt undermined property not only in Ireland but across the United Kingdom. He took this decision while serving as Colonial Secretary, a post he returned to seven years later when he next served in government, this time in a Conservative cabinet led by Robert Peel. In between, Derby and his followers, “the Derby Dilly,” attempted to form their own combination but were outflanked by Lord Russell, leader of the Whigs, and Peel's definitive Tamworth Manifesto.

Within the Conservative fold, Derby quickly established himself as a future leader, especially after his request for removal to the House of Lords. There, Derby adopted a more sedate style, distancing himself not only from his former Whig colleagues and the Commons, but also from his reputation for provocative rhetoric. Difficulties with his brief as Colonial Secretary might have undermined these qualities, however, had he not suddenly found himself leader of the protectionist faction of the Conservatives following Peel's decision in 1845 to repeal the Corn Laws.

For Derby, regular visits to Ireland in this period only underscored his belief that the necessity of charity and self-help meant the state could play only a limited role in Irish relief. Nevertheless, his commitment to the English agricultural interest seems at odds with the highly profitable industrial income from his family's Lancashire property. Whatever his reasoning, it placed him, following the Duke of Wellington's retirement in 1846, as the leader of the majority of his Conservative peers. The gradual acceptance of free trade, and Derby's attempt to lessen his party's hostility to it, aided by Disraeli, helped to heal rifts and make him the undisputed leader of an alternative to the embattled Whig government. Derby had bolstered his claim with a close relationship with the Quarterly Review and regular attacks on Palmerston's foreign policy. Derby's failure to form a ministry when summoned by Queen Victoria in 1851 therefore owed more to the state of his party's front bench than to his own willingness to take power.

This biography highlights certain themes that dominate Derby's early career: a belief in the supremacy of parliament that did not rule out the need for reform, support for Catholic Emancipation and the reallocation of constituencies to the industrial towns, and opposition to popular agitation, even if it supported him, on the grounds it diminished parliamentary sovereignty. Too much reform risked the loss of the Whig constitution he cherished, a position that justified his joining the Conservatives, the true inheritors, he argued, of the spirit of 1688. This biography also reminds us of the importance of religion in British politics, not only to Derby personally but also in its implications for Anglo-Irish relations and colonial policy and in its capacity, in the guise of the “Papal aggression” crisis, to bring down a ministry.

These themes are gleaned through repetition, for this is an old-fashioned biography in which the narrative is largely chronological, an approach that in this instance has merit but is not always successful. Derby's family life is largely ignored outside the introductory chapters, with only his successes and failures on the turf acting as a background relief against which his political life is played out. His commitment to protection is not fully reconciled with the importance of Lancashire industry. And Derby's performance in Ireland and the colonies is sometimes analyzed too much on his own terms, or as a judgment of high politics. These are, however, inevitable criticisms of biography, and they should not detract from what is an important work of scholarship and a long-overdue treatment of an important figure.