William Hesketh Lever - soap-boiler, social reformer, MP, tribal chieftain, multi millionaire and Lord of the Western Isles - was one of the most extraordinary men ever to leave his mark on Britain. Beliefs far ahead of their times - the welfare state, votes for women, workers' rights - jostled in his mind with ideas that were fantastically bonkers - the world's problems could be solved by moving populations from country to country, ballroom dancing could save the soul and the only healthy way to sleep was outdoors in the wind and the rain.

Adam Macqueen traces Lever's footsteps from his humble Bolton boyhood to a business empire that straddled the world, visiting the homes and model towns from the Mersey to the Congo that still bear the mark - and often the name - of William Lever.

It is a hilarious and touching journey that shines a spotlight on a world and a set of beliefs long gone, and asks several vital questions. Where does philanthropy stop and social engineering begin? Is it right for an employer to dictate how his workers spend their weekends and hire private detectives to make sure they are doing it properly? Are the length of a lawn and the curve of a banister of vital importance in the great scheme of things? And why would a multi millionaire with half a dozen homes and property on four continents choose to sleep on the roof…?

 

"No other biography in recent years has left me so desperately wanting to meet its subject... Macqueen comes to William Lever from a background of Private Eye and the Big Issue, and as a result his biography is wonderfully entertaining, constantly reainimating the period and the places with wit and cunning."
- Mail on Sunday

"William Hesketh Lever, later Viscount Leverhulme, was Britain's soap king... The nucleus of this story is not detergent but Lever himself, whose career as a businessmean and in-house despot financed a variety of parallel desitinies, as architect, collector, benefactor, social engineer, ballroom dancer and reluctant politician, in most of which activities he displayed an impressive degree of eccentricity… a crazy story, crazily told."
- Sunday Telegraph

"Lever was brilliant, dotty and impatient, a small, contrary juggernaut of a man. Adam Macqueen has accomplished an affectionate portrait that brings this extraordinary character fully to life in joyously funny detail."
- Waterstones Quarterly

"Adam Macqueen's two chapters on the building of Port Sunlight offer a good illustration of his evenhandedness as Lever's biographer. He is justly admiring of the village's spacious layout, with its 12-foot pavements, its manicured lawns, communal allotments and sedulously observed architectural variety ... Yet the whole achievement is also seen as symbolic of Lever's dictatorial, incurably meddlesome approach to his workforce from management to shopfloor. The Sunlighters, in return for tennis courts, a ping-pong team, something called 'the Old English Choir', the Bridge Inn (firmly shut on Sundays) and free lectures at the Mutual Improvement Society, were expected to abide by an obsessively detailed set of rules. Tenants of the ideal villas could find themselves evicted for slothfulness, gambling, reluctance to participate in community activities or even failing to grow the species of flowers approved by the boss."
- The Spectator

"Macqueen stuffs the book with amusing detail, humorously told."
- Daily Telegraph

"A 21st-century biography of Britain's greatest 19th-century brandmaker.
Lever is an absorbing subject... Mr Macqueen manages to get behind the man'sgruff exterior, suggesting that what kept him so busy and so disciplined was the fear of what might flood in should he leave his mind momentarily empty. Particularly moving are the descriptions of William's only brother James, closeted away for years for something that may have been no more sinister than (then rare) diabetes; and of his unsuccessful efforts, late in life when already profoundly deaf, to transform the Outer Hebrides into another experiment in welfare capitalism... There's no harm in a little corporate nostalgia, especially when it is delivered in Mr Macqueen's refreshingly vivacious prose."
- The Economist (BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2004)

"Like Longitude or The Surgeon of Crowthorne, it's always entertaining… great popular history."
- Simon Mayo Show, BBC Five Live

"There are some exquisite images in Adam Macqueen's biography, such as the upright Victorian on his fact-finding world tour trying to surf with the Hawaiian natives… Written with wit and verve, managing to be both inspirational and a cautionary tale."
- The Times

"One of the most extraordinary men ever to leave his mark on the public and private face of Britain … he proved that the great British eccentric was not purely a product of the aristocracy."
- Liverpool Daily Post

"Adam Macqueen is fond of his subject, and not just because Lever was a colourful, eccentric (he slept in a roofless bedroom), larger-than-life personality. Lever was also a decent man, a good employer, a thoughtful politician and a genuine philanthropist, although he'd have hated that title. Any man who created a huge global company (Unilever) and a charitable foundation (the Leverhulme Trust), which between them dispense around a hundred million a year to deserving projects, is worth a decent modern biography... an interesting, well-researched and well-written tale."
- Sunday Herald

"Absolutely hilarious"
- Boyd Hilton, Heat

"I loved it"
- Donna McPhail

"Witty, informative and fascinating reading… Macqueen has done a great job and all in all The King of Sunlight is a bit of a gem."
- Newstalk Radio

"A thoroughly entertaining rummage through the life and times of one of Britain's most eccentric businessmen, it will leave you smiling, sweet-smelling, and ready to storm the history round of your local pub quiz."
- Sandi Toksvig