"Tyrants"

Was, I wonder, Gladstone’s fiery speech motivated by interest in Bulgaria or was it that he simply disliked the Turks?
"Perhaps it was prejudice," Parrish tells me with disarming candour. "I think he thought that they were cruel, unreasonable and tyrannical rulers, which, of course, in some ways they were."

The 1876 speech preceded another infamous massacre perpetrated by the Turks – this time against the Armenians – 10 years later. "Gladstone again condemned the Turks but on that occasion without much effect and the Turks virtually polished off Armenia. I don’t think (in 1876) he was really saying to himself ‘I’ve got to stop Bulgaria’. Rather, I think he was saying ‘I’ve got to stop the Turks.’ He got extremely hot under the collar, I think, making it a stick to beat the government with. He really annoyed Disraeli; they didn’t like each other at all.

Gladstone genuinely thought that Disraeli was a charlatan and Disraeli thought Gladstone was a hypocrite."

Looking at pictures of Gladstone, he comes across as stern, magisterial and imposing.

"To a lot of people he could seem very forbidding. By the time my grandmother knew him he was getting pretty deaf but he was incredibly good with his children and grandchildren. Accounts of living with him as a family man recall that he was great fun and liked silly games, completely different from his public image. He was 88 when he died and right up to the end he was always thinking progressively, never looking backwards," Parrish says.

"He completely transformed Britain," says Parrish, citing, in particular, the creation of a national elementary educational programme for all children and his crusade against rank and privilege, both of which were inviolable for Disraeli. "People had problems with his personality; he had a tendency to preach at people but the power of his oratory was extraordinary.

There’s a picture of him addressing 40 000 people in North Wales. This was 1896, when he was 87, but every word he uttered could be heard clearly. He spoke for 45 minutes, articulating slowly in a sing-song voice. His speeches were a major event and people were brought on special trains from all over the country to hear them."

Before I leave, I wonder what Parrish thought his great-great-grandfather would make of today’s Britain. "He’d be appalled, it has no moral purpose, it’s quite depressing," he says.

Parrish thinks modern politics has only thrown up one truly great political figure to rival Gladstone – Margaret Thatcher.
That, of course, is also the matter of some controversy, just like the great Victorian himself.