Benjamin Disraeli in 1878 by Cornelius Jabez Hughes

WILL any of our recent batch of prime ministers ever be immortalised in a movie?

Among the Oscars achieved for playing British prime ministers on film – Gary Oldman’s 2018 Churchill, Meryl Streep’s 2012 Thatcher – a less well remembered Academy Award is that for George Arliss’s 1929 Disraeli.

The subject of the movie was born in Camden at 22 Theobalds Road WC1 and attended a dame school in Islington from 1810. Although proud of his Jewish ancestry, (he once told a Jewish boy: “You and I belong to a race which can do everything but fail”), his political career was aided by his family’s conversion to Christianity in 1817.

However Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) remains the only prime minister of Jewish birth.

As a young man, he seemed an unlikely candidate for future political eminence. A foppish and profligate dandy, he spent three years cavorting around the Mediterranean and emerging from Egypt with a nasty bout of venereal disease. In Malta, his appearance dressed as a multi-hued Greek pirate led to his being followed by a gaping crowd and the English Governor collapsing with laughter. Disraeli later said: “Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.”

Returning to Britain, he dabbled in some disastrous mining investments which, after the City crash of 1825, left him evading creditors for the next 20 years. He partly bounced back by turning his hand to writing novels, notably Vivian Grey.

However, in the early 1840s, Disraeli’s life changed dramatically. Despite his quip “I have always thought that every woman should marry, and no man”, his union with the wealthy Mary Lewis cleared his debts and paved his way into Parliament. Although he acknowledged – and his wife accepted – that he had married for money, their relationship was to mature into an abiding love affair.

Despite attempts to tone down his flamboyant wit – “Men destined to the highest places should beware of badinage… an insular country subject to fogs and with a powerful middle class requires grave statesmen” – Disraeli could not resist mocking the Liberal premier Lord Palmerston.

Palmerston had revenge when, aged 79, he was cited as the co-respondent in a divorce case. (The lady in question was named Mrs Kane – which gave rise to the speculation “she was Kane, but was he Able?”). Disraeli was appalled when he heard the news: “If Palmerston can provide evidence of his potency in his electoral address, he’ll sweep the country” – a prediction that proved absolutely correct.

By 1868, Disraeli himself had climbed to what he termed “the top of the greasy pole” and became prime minister. Describing his own Tories as “the stupid party” he resolved to alter the whole conservative philosophy by forging a paternalistic alliance between the privileged upper class and the working classes. He attacked the Manchester School of laissez-faire economics: ‘‘If you convert the senate into a counting house, it will not be long before the nation degenerates into a factory”.

Going against the Tory grain, he organised the state Post Office purchase of the telegraph companies (an early form of nationalisation), and also introduced Parliamentary Acts that protected factory workers, that allowed peaceful picketing, and that enable workers to sue employers in the civil courts if they broke legal contracts.

A radical MP said in 1879: “Disraeli has done more for the working classes in five years than the Liberals have in 50.”

Among his more famous political moves were his proclamation of Queen Victoria as Empress of India, his purchase of the Suez Canal, his successful wars in Afghanistan and Zululand, and his brilliant diplomatic success in reconciling the opposing sides at the 1878 Congress of Berlin.

An impressed Bismarck admitted: “The old Jew – that is the Man.”

His most enduring Liberal opponent was William Gladstone whom Disraeli teased unmercifully. One day in the House of Commons while Gladstone was giving a major speech, he found himself distracted by the sight of Disraeli sitting opposite earnestly perusing what appeared to be a momentous document which he finally and very slowly tore to pieces. A curious MP gathered the scraps later only to find it had been a blank sheet of paper.

Disraeli was asked to define the difference between a misfortune and a calamity. He replied that “if, for instance, Mr Gladstone were to fall into the river – that would be a misfortune. But if anyone were to pull him out, that would be a calamity.”

Recovering from the sadness of his wife’s death and now aged 70, he fell in love again but this time his passion was unrequited, the subject of his affection being another man’s wife.

He said: “I am certain there is no greater misfortune than to have a heart that will not grow old.”

He never lost his sense of humour though. When a buffoonish Foreign Office minister named Waddington managed to survive an assassination attempt, Disraeli expressed satisfaction at his escape. Then he added: “It is just as well. Waddington would have made assassination look ridiculous”.

• Adapted from Neil Titley’s book The Oscar Wilde World of Gossip. For information go to www.wildetheatre.co.uk
Details of new deluxe and revised American edition at uniexna.com