Opening paragraphs................

William Ewart Gladstone was born in Liverpool at the end of 1809.  When, just over half a century later, he had introduced the pattern-setting budget of 1860, Walter Bagehot recorded this description of him: 'Ah, Oxford on the surface, but Liverpool below.'  Bagehot, founder of the Economist, was in many ways the nineteenth century's best substitute for Dr Johnson.  He could aphorize at the drop of a hat, and often with wisdom.  But was he right on this occasion?  Gladstone undoubtedly became a great Oxonian, an accomplished scholar in his youth, a member of Parliament for the University for seventeen years in middle age, and towards the end of his life its most famous ornament.  The town of his birth, on the other hand, faded into the background while he was still a very young man.  Did he nonetheless remain 'Liverpool below'?
-Roy Jenkins, Gladstone:  A Biography