Why did the late Professor David Cesarani write the posthumously published Disraeli: The Novel Politician (Yale, £16.99)? It cannot have been to tell us anything about Disraeli that we did not already know, because the book is based almost entirely on printed secondary sources - or, perhaps more accurately, selective printed secondary sources.
Cesarani appears not to have consulted the political memoir published in 1903 by R. A. Cross (Home Secretary in Disraeli's 1874-80 ministry), which - indiscreetly and probably illegally - revealed details of Dizzy's cabinet meetings, nor many of the scholarly writings that have forensically addressed various aspects of Dizzy's political and social reforms.
The jacket blurb indicates why, describing the book as, "a fresh, vivid look at Disraeli's life, achievements, and temperament that casts doubts on his much-touted commitment to Jewish rights." In other words, the book was conceived as a hatchet job. In this ambition it has failed.
The sub-text of Cesarani's biography is (as he explicitly proclaims) to support the view of Hannah Arendt that "Disraeli almost single-handedly invented the lexicon of modern racial antisemitism." He draws much of the evidence for this fantastic assertion from a misdirected examination of Disraeli's novels - not least the character of Sidonia, the mysteriously all-powerful cosmopolitan Jew whom Dizzy introduced to his readers in Coningsby (1844). It is true that Sidonia was destined to be exploited by generations of antisemites but that was not Dizzy's purpose in crafting him. His purpose was, rather, to underline the pride that Jews - including himself - had in their ethnic origins. We may, indeed, criticise Disraeli for over-egging the pudding. But hindsight is the historian's worst enemy.
Cesarani dwells at length on Dizzy's part in the parliamentary battle for Jewish civil rights that stretched over three decades (1830-60) and culminated in the epic struggles of David Salomons and Lionel - to be admitted to Parliament as professing Jews. It is true that - at least in public - Dizzy kept more or less aloof from this controversy until the 1850s. But even Cesarani admits that, at certain moments, Dizzy's behind-the-scenes interventions were crucial. Cesarani is inexplicably silent on Dizzy's part (as Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1852) in promoting legislation that relieved Salomons of the severe civil disabilities the courts had imposed on him for having had the chutzpah (1851) to vote in three divisions that resulted in his expulsion from the House of Commons.
It fails in its aim to be a hatchet job
There are some factual inaccuracies: the prime minister who sponsored parliamentary reform in 1831 was Earl Grey, not Lord John Russell; the Lord Rowton who accompanied Disraeli's coffin to its grave in Hughendon church (1881) was not Phillip Rose (Disraeli's solicitor) but Montagu Corry (his private secretary).