Benjamin Disraeli was perhaps the most colourful Prime Minister in British history. This seventh volume of the highly acclaimed Benjamin Disraeli Letters edition shows also that he was a dedicated, resourceful, and farsighted statesman. It contains 670 letters written between 1857 and 1859. They address friends, family, political colleagues, and, not least, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

During this period, Disraeli shepherded a fragile Conservative government through the Indian Mutiny, the Second Opium War with China, the Orsini bomb plot, and the...