I would like first of all to express my gratitude to Her Majesty the Queen for her gracious permission to make use of material from the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle. I would also like to thank Mr Robert Mackworth-Young, MVO, the Librarian, and Miss Price Hill, MVO, the former Registrar, for all the help which they personally gave me.
The Disraeli Papers are now at Hughenden, in the custody of the National Trust, which owns the house. I must thank the Trust for permission to use and quote from the papers and to reproduce several pictures among the plates. I am most grateful to Mr Rogers and his colleagues at Hughenden for their unfailing courtesy and kindness. The papers were being catalogued by Mr R. W. Stewart while I was engaged on this biography: I would like to thank him for the help that he has given me; also for letting me see his unpublished work on Disraeli’s early literary career, and for compiling the list of Disraeli’s writings which appears in Appendix II.
I must acknowledge the kind permission of the Beaconsfield Trustees to quote from Disraeli’s unpublished letters.
I must also express my gratitude to Sir Francis Sykes, Bt, for permitting me to quote from the letters of Henrietta Lady Sykes and for lending me the portrait of her by Maclise which is reproduced as Plate 3.
I would like to thank Lord Derby for his kindness in lending me the papers of the 14th Earl of Derby, and Mr Montagu Lowry-Corry for lending me those of Lord Rowton. I am also most grateful to Sir John Murray, KCVO, for giving me access to the Murray Papers and permitting me to quote from Monypenny and Buckle’s Life of Disraeli.
I have to thank the following for their kind permission to quote from material which is in their possession or of which they own the copyright: the Marquess of Salisbury, KG (Salisbury Papers); Lady Cobbold (the Lytton Papers); the Trustees of the British Museum (Papers of Sir Robert Peel, Lord Cross, Lord Iddesleigh and Benjamin Austen); the Hon. Jacob Rothschild (letters of Mrs Brydges Willyams).
I would like to thank Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, KCVO, for permission to reproduce the drawing of Disraeli by Count d’Orsay (Plate 2b), and Mr Hugh Carey for presenting me with the cartoon by ‘Vincent’ which is reproduced as Plate 9.
I wish to express my gratitude to Dr G. Kitson Clark for allowing me to read a part of his forthcoming work on Peel and the Corn Laws, and to Dr F. B. Smith for allowing me to consult his unpublished Cambridge Ph.D. thesis, The Making of the Second Reform Bill.
Finally let me thank Mr James Wright for his careful editing of my typescript; the Earl of Birkenhead and Mr E. T. Williams for undertaking the arduous task of reading the proofs; and Mr F. T. Dunn for compiling the index.