This concise study of Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81) focuses on the substantial reassessment of Disraeli"s career and personality that is currently taking place. Particular reference is made to the role played in Disraeli"s conception of life and politics by his Jewishness and his romanticism. The book also seeks to understand Disraeli in a European as well as a British frame of thought. These new elements are set alongside all the principal biographical features of Disraeli"s life and career. This "brief life" can therefore be read both as a standard, up-to-date biography of one of the greatest statesmen of the later Victorian age and as a reinterpretation of key aspects of Disraeli"s life and times.