Colin Kidd writes:

Few politicians from these islands have attracted the same degree of obloquy as Lord Castlereagh:

I met murder on the way –
He had a face like Castlereagh
Very smooth he look’d, yet grim;
Seven bloodhounds followed him.

Shelley’s The Masque of Anarchy (1819) goes on to describe how this diabolic Castlereagh figure ‘tossed’ the dogs ‘human hearts to chew’. In the same year, Byron set out Castlereagh’s misanthropic and authoritarian vision of the world in Don Juan. Bew’s achievement is to portray Castlereagh, convincingly and without any historical or biographical contortion, as an inquisitive and open-minded son of the Ulster Presbyterian Enlightenment. Notwithstanding the disorientation of his final days, he emerges from Bew’s study as quietly conscientious, moderate and level-headed. The poets’ version of Castlereagh did scant justice to the man or the politician.

(LRB 24 May 2012)

Quercus | Hardback 582 pp. |ISBN: 9780857381866