Lecture: THE HEART AND SOUL OF A STATESMAN: The spiritual life of William Ewart Gladstone by Prof. Michael Wheeler

The leading statesman of nineteenth-century Britain, a figure who bestrode the political world like a Colossus, also led a complex inner life. Join Michael Wheeler as he traces the movements of the heart and
soul of William Ewart Gladstone from William’s daily disciplines of prayer and reflection to his earnest attempts to follow the precepts of Christianity through action in the public realm and in private
philanthropy.
Gladstone remained an independent intellectual, eschewing party labels within the Church of England and working out his own stance in relation to specific Liberal party policies in politics. He was as much a
man of letters as he was a politician. Later in his political career, ‘the people’s William’ appealed to public opinion through a series of national moral campaigns. His fiercest battles, however, were spiritual, as he
castigated himself for falling short of the ideals set out in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, particularly with regard to sexual desire as he sought to rescue women from a life of prostitution and became obsessed
with a former courtesan. His longest crusade was against the enemy within.

Michael Wheeler is a long-time supporter of Gladstone’s’ Library and a former Chair of Trustees. He is a cultural historian of the Victorian age and a Visiting Professor of English at the University of Southampton.
Known for the clarity of his writing and the accessibility of his talks, he has published extensively with Cambridge University Press, Yale University Press, Oxford University Press, Longman and Macmillan, and
has lectured in eighteen countries outside the UK.