Throughout his parliamentary career, Disraeli’s defining characteristics in speech had been scorn, mockery and sarcasm. Lord Curzon, a future foreign secretary, would record that Disraeli, even in his prime, ‘was not an orator by nature or art’, but was instead the master of ‘the jewelled phrase, the exquisite epigram, the stinging sneer. He was like a conjurer on a platform, whose audience with open mouths awaited the next trick.’ The success of his parliamentary speeches was inevitably judged on the number of these brilliant verbal tricks he was able to pull off. When the lines worked, they
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