This good-natured book examines the friendship between Lloyd George and Churchill, opening up some novel views of twentieth-century history in the process. It is illustrated with photographs from the Lloyd George family album – the author is David Lloyd George’s great grandson – and contemporary cartoons.
Two aspects are of particular interest. We tend to think of
Churchill as the High Tory who was his country’s saviour in 1940, but this
book’s most vivid portrait of him is as the young radical Liberal of 30 years
before. Elected as a Tory in the Khaki election of 1900, he crossed the floor
over free trade to join the Liberal benches in 1904. (On rejoining the
Conservatives in 1925 he remarked: “Anyone
can rat, but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat.”)
As a
Liberal MP Churchill was entirely won over by Lloyd George’s radicalism and
became his great ally when he joined the Cabinet in 1908. He was an immensely
dynamic figure and some commentators remarked that he might have led the
Conservative Party at a very young age if only he had stayed with it – he was
certainly a more compelling figure than Bonar Law. In the First World War, when
it became clear that Asquith was on the way out, there were those who thought
that it was Churchill who would become prime minister rather than Lloyd George.
The
book’s other interesting theme is the debt Churchill owed to Lloyd George when
he became prime minister in 1940. For Lloyd George had already shown him what
needed to be done to win a twentieth-century war: a unified allied command, a
concentration on the production of munitions and a willingness to overrule the
generals and admirals.
In many ways the two men offer a contrast in political personalities. Lloyd George, for all his radical passion, was a pragmatist and dealmaker: Churchill was a romantic. You can see this contrast in types in the reminiscence of A. J. Sylvester, Lloyd George’s personal secretary, after the Welshman had called in the railway union leaders and avoided a threatened strike:
Afterwards I went to the Home Office to see Winston. He was very angry with the results. There he stood before a huge map showing police stations all over the country, and all the available forces ready to take action wherever necessary. His mind was on a fight.
It was beer and sandwiches versus a more Thatcherite approach – Lloyd George later complained of Churchill’s tendency to “get his maps out”. Still, the pragmatic way is not always right: we are still living with the consequences of Lloyd George allowing the six counties to be treated separately when Home Rule came to Ireland.
Robert Lloyd George’s grasp is not always as sure as his ancestor’s was, and there are a number of errors in the book. The idea that the first Labour government published the Zinoviev letter has escaped from a lost Sellars and Yeatman work called 1906 and All That; Charles Masterman was not a civil servant but the minister who took Lloyd George’s health insurance legislation through the House in the teeth of extraordinary opposition; Masterman’s wife Lucy was not Gladstone’s granddaughter; and C. P. Scott’s dates are certainly not 1905-80.
These errors do not detract from the book, which can be recommended in particular for those seeking fresh light on Asquith’s government. Talking, however, of the Mastermans reminds one of the best source of all for understanding that administration: Lucy Masterman’s biography of her husband. Charles Masterman served under both Churchill and Lloyd George, and he and Lucy became friends with both families. As a result she is able to paint an intimate portrait of the leading personalities of the era. David Lloyd George quotes from it several times, and it is to be hoped that a published will bring it back from the undeserved obscurity in which it currently languishes