Has the most successful species in British political history finally become extinct? The Conservative party dominated British politics for 120 years from Disraeli's victory in 1874, culminating in an unprecedented eighteen-year spell in government after 1979. And yet at the very end of the century the Tories imploded so disastrously as to suggest the party might be doomed to follow the Liberals into oblivion.
Geoffrey Wheatcroft has observed this extraordinary drama at close hand, interviewing all the key players on (and, more often, off) the record. In this provocative and often acerbically funny book he examines how the Tories came to enjoy their unlikely triumph - and their spectacular decline.
- ISBN10 0141018674
- ISBN13 9780141018676
- Publish Date 1 September 2005 (first published 31 March 2005)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 6 December 2012
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Penguin Books Ltd
- Format Paperback
- Pages 344
- Language English