Gladstone and Disraeli were the fiercest political rivals of the modern age To Disraeli, his antagonist was an 'unprincipled maniac' characterised by an 'extraordinary mixture of envy, vindictiveness, hypocrisy and superstition' For Gladstone, his rival was 'The Grand Corrupter' whose destruction he plotted 'day and night, week by week, month by month' No wonder that when Lewis Carroll's 'Through the Looking-Glass' appeared in 1871, so many readers recognised the great adversaries as the warring lion and unicorn 'fighting for the crown'