As Gladstone's bicentenary is marked, York Membery reports on the Grand Old Man's enduring popularity in Bulgaria

Big in Bulgaria

"Some of my countrymen might be admirers of Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair," says Dr Lachezar Matev, the Bulgarian ambassador to Britain, "but William Gladstone will always be number one as far as we're concerned."

Matev was speaking at the launch of Gladstone's bicentenary celebrations at the four-time Liberal prime minister's former London residence in Carlton House Terrace. But the anniversary of his birth in December 1809 will be celebrated in almost equal measure by the ambassador's countrymen. Not only will there be a lecture and reception at the Bulgarian embassy in London later this year, there will also be a special Gladstonian academic conference in the country's capital, Sofia, and a trip by the British-Bulgarian Friendship Society to Bulgaria to investigate his legacy.

The reason for the Grand Old Man's enduring popularity is simple. In 1876, news of the brutal suppression of the "April Uprising", an insurrection organised by the Bulgarians in what was then part of the Ottoman Empire, involving regular units of the Imperial Army and irregular bashi-bazouk, reached the other end of Europe. The Tory government of Benjamin Disraeli, in keeping with normal British foreign policy, regarded the Ottoman Empire as a bulwark against possible Russian expansion into eastern Europe, and was reluctant to become entangled in what it regarded as a largely domestic issue. But Gladstone was enraged by reports of the massacre of thousands. He published a powerful polemic, Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East, which called for the Ottomans to withdraw "bag and baggage" from Bulgaria. "Let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner, namely, by carrying off themselves," he raged.

The pamphlet sold 200,000 copies in a month, helped rally other influential figures such as the Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi to the Bulgarian cause, and led to Europe-wide demands for reform of the Ottoman Empire, which contributed to the re-establishment of Bulgaria as a de facto independent nation in 1878.

In the ensuing Midlothian campaign of 1880, Gladstone drew frequent attention to the Bulgarian Horrors in a series of mass public election rallies in which foreign policy played a surprisingly large part, leading to the Liberals' triumph at the ballot box.

Gladstone's actions gained him heroic status and his name was championed across Bulgaria. "There is hardly a town in Bulgaria that doesn't have a street named in his honour," says Dr Matev. Even during the long years of communist rule, his importance in the creation of the Bulgarian state continued to be emphasised.

"For someone like Gladstone to speak out so clearly and passionately - such a commanding figure in the most powerful nation on earth - had a huge impact," says Professor Richard Aldous, author of an acclaimed co-biography of Gladstone and Disraeli, The Lion and the Unicorn. "While the parallel is far from exact, look at the importance that Barack Obama's opposition to the war in Iraq on moral grounds had on a global audience and the importance that had in his subsequent election campaign."

What would Gladstone himself have made of all the fuss surrounding the bicentenary? Peter Francis, warden of St Deiniol's, the prime ministerial library founded by "the People's William" in Hawarden, North Wales, says: "I think he would have been deeply gratified, for the two countries both had a special place in his heart."

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