I finished off another "life story" last night:- "Shaftesbury : The Poor Man's Earl" by John Pollock (1985).
My knowledge about the Noble Earl had been sketchy, to say the least, but Pollock's slender tome put all that right without too much flowery verbage. I'll give this one 7/10 (as it wasn't especially "light" reading).
I had not realised just how many of our now familar institutions Shaftesbury had either helped to set up, or gave patronage to (
eg, Barnado's, NSPCC, RSPCA ... and many others).
One of the utterances attributed to him that I particularly liked was:- "The great and final Garden of Paradise is only to be approached through the Garden of Gethsemane" ... well, we don't hear much of that sort of thing these days, do we?
On putting aside this book I began to ponder who amongst our present day "Noble Lords" could begin to be compared with the likes of Lord Shaftesbury (and yes, there we a few others of similar calibre back in Victorian times) - but, alas, I have so far drawn a blank.
Does anyone else have a candidate in mind?
