Plantagenet Palliser, now come into his inheritance as Duke of Omnium, at last makes it to the top of the greasy pole. The government that he heads is an implausible Liberal-Conservative coalition, opposed only by "Mr. Daubeny", a Disraeli caricature, and his handful of (to the author's mind) insufferable Tories. With its massive majority, however, the Omnium ministry can get nothing done - primarily because Trollope, for all of his sentimental liberalism, can't think of anything that might need doing. We are treated to Chancellor of the Exchequer Finespun's obsession with lowering the duties on French wines, the Duke's hapless attraction to decimal coinage and a subplot in which his Duchess naively promotes the political career of a reckless adventurer (another Disraeli look-alike). Eventually, the coalition breaks up over a preposterous dispute about an award of the Order of the Garter. The Duke is relieved to be out of office, and most readers will concur with him.

Nonetheless, if one closes one's eyes to the less than credible high politics, this novel has Trollope's typical virtues. No other author has so excelled at making the ordinary run of humanity vivid and fascinating. In real life, Planty Pall would have been a dull stick, Duchess Glencora a shallow, sexually frustrated meddler and Fernando Lopez a transparent fraud. On these pages, they command our interest.

The Prime Minister is the weakest of the Palliser series, which means that it is merely in the upper two percent of English literature. ( )