Jane Ridley
Welfare & Warfare
David Lloyd George: The Great Outsider
By Roy Hattersley
Little, Brown 693pp £25 order from our bookshop
Retired politicians have cornered the market in biographies of great leaders. These books annoy historians because they pinch their research and sell more copies. They tend to be uncritically admiring too, claiming that a lifetime’s political experience qualifies them to hand out praise of the great man. Roy Hattersley’s new life of David Lloyd George is different. It begins conventionally enough but, as it goes on, Hattersley becomes increasingly critical of his subject, making this a more interesting book.
Recent biographers have concentrated on Lloyd George ‘the man’, which is biographers’ code for writing about the sex life. Lloyd George, who was very short and broad-shouldered with an ‘enormous untidy head’, seems an unlikely Lothario. Ffion Hague and John Campbell have both shown, however, that he not
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
‘Even setting to one side the historically neuralgic relationship with ... Ireland, Britain’s insular periphery has from at least the time of the Romans presented difficulties for authorities wishing to centralise.’
Peter Marshall on Britain's islands.
Peter Marshall - Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago
Peter Marshall: Notes from the Atlantic Archipelago - The Britannias: An Island Quest by Alice Albinia
literaryreview.co.uk
Offer ends soon! Take advantage of our best ever Black Friday offer and get a year's subscription for £29.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/blackfriday/
Our best ever Black Friday discount!
Offer ends on Monday.