THE INVINCIBLE MR. DISRAELI

Trevor Howard does rather well here to condense thirty-odd years of the political life of Benjamin Disraeli into seventy-five minutes. A principled idealist of the Jewish faith, he was determined to attain the office of Prime Minister to the initially quite hostile Queen Victoria (Kate Reid) and to take his nation to the pinnacle of the world order. His only other love being his wife Mary-Anne (a generous contribution from Greer Garson), a devoted, loving but rather poorly woman. This drama illustrates in the briefest of fashions just how this man managed too attain the highest office, and of the price he had to pay along the way. The production is well supported by the costume and set departments, and the story engages well, albeit superficially, with the politics of the time. The writing did annoy me after a while, though. I could have been doing with much less England/English and more Britain/British - a very lazy trait amongst English writers who are apt to forget that the UK is more than just their bit. Otherwise, it serves a useful purpose in providing an introduction that, though not as charmingly told as the George Arliss version from 1929, is informative and encouraging of more reading about this curious and quite visionary man who played the game adeptly and cleverly.