Say what you will about Victorian England's prime ministers and business leaders, at least they weren't Yahoos. Besides heading the Conservative Party, Benjamin Disraeli wrote serious and witty novels that we still read today. His rival William Gladstone published scholarly studies of classical and biblical subjects. Even the busiest captain of industry envied erudition and yearned to be more than just an ignorant millionaire. Consider, for instance, the subject of “John Meade Falkner: Abnormal Romantic,” an enthralling, beautifully composed biography by Richard Davenport-Hines.
The oldest son of a clergyman, Falkner was born in 1858 and died at age 74, in 1932. A big man, he stood an impressive 6 feet 6 inches tall. After graduating from Oxford — for which his father somehow scraped together the money — he started his working life as a tutor in the household of Sir Andrew Noble, a partner in Armstrong Whitworth, one of the world's top three armaments manufacturers (along with Vickers and Krupp). Through social skills that Davenport-Hines likens to those of a Renaissance courtier, Falkner soon made himself into his employer's indispensable right-hand man, commuting daily to the company's mammoth industrial park at Elswick in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. After Noble's death in 1915, Falkner was elected to succeed him as chairman, overseeing Armstrong Whitworth during World War I before retiring in 1921.
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