He lived near to Chester at Hawarden Castle and he bequeathed his vast book collection to the magnificent library he created with a £40,000 donation (worth £4.6m), a fabulous building in Hawarden which is Britain's only residential library.

Gladstone's reputation has been tarnished of late as the family fortune was built on slavery - his dad owned a number of plantantions and over 2,000 slaves - and he opposed emancipation on the grounds that people of African heritage needed moral re-education first!

This contrasts with his life as a devout Christian. He famously used to roam the streets of London seeking out 'fallen women' to save them from their life of prostitution. He continued this missionary work even when he was in Number 10.

Whatever your opinion of him today, Gladstone was one of Britain's great Victorian Statesmen and a political colossus in his time. 

He is caught in reflective pose in this ceramic work inspired by the portrait by H S Mendelssohn.