Dandy, adventurer, novelist and twice Prime Ministers, Benjamin Disraeli was one of the most extraordinary Englishmen of the 19th century. This biography is not only a portrait of Disraeli, but of Victorian England itself. Disraeli's spectacular rise to fame was set against all odds. Combining political genius with an appetite for wine, women and salons, he had to overcome immense financial problems - even the threat of debtor's prison - and disabling depression to forge his astonishing career. Raised from his teens as an Anglican, he was always perceived as a Jew; yet he exploited his unacceptable origins to political and literary advantage. And while driving himself in the searching glare of a hostile press, from upstart playboy to Earl, he appears to have secretly fathered two children - as is revealed here. Drawing on Disraeli's writings as well as upon other sources, many of them new, this biography of one of Britain's greatest Prime Ministers, and Victoria's favourite of the 11 who served her, is also a social and political history of England and its imperial apogee.