WILL BE SHIPPED FROM 27TH MARCH

736 Pages

ISBN 978-1-917120-54-8

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Paul Spackman is a graduate of King Alfred's College. Living in North Wales for over 30 years, he was inspired to write a biography of David Lloyd George, the UK's last Liberal and only Welsh Prime Minister to date, rooting him in his native land. Lloyd George was, in his lifetime, a controversial figure, and he remains so today. Spackman contends that this is largely due to oft-repeated misunderstandings and misconceptions of the true nature of the man and his policies.

A century after the end of the Great War (1918), the ‘Spanish Flu’ Pandemic (1918-1920) that nearly killed Lloyd George, the signing of the Treaty of Versailles (1919) and the end of Lloyd George’s premiership (1922), the time is ripe to reassess the legacy of this Great Statesman in the life of the UK, indeed of Europe and the wider World.

Spackman spent seven years researching the extraordinarily broad, original and far-reaching nature of Lloyd George's early ‘labourite’ views and of his social reforms, that laid the bedrock of much of the 1945-51 Attlee Labour Government’s Welfare State legislation; the crucial importance of Lloyd George taking the helm of government from the foundering Asquith at the height of the Great War; his approach to the treatment of defeated Germany at the Versailles negotiations, how his more merciful and tolerant views, if adopted, might have changed the course of history for the better; his role in Irish affairs between 1916-22, pointing out those actually largely responsible for much of the undoubted tragedy and its long-drawn out aftermath; and showing that the period after his resignation as premier were not, from an ‘ideas’ point of view, the oft-quoted 'wilderness years', but rather a fertile period of creative, practical plans to solve the immense issues of the 1920s and 30s, unfortunately neglected by the nation.

What emerges is a vibrant but often disregarded story, here retold as a human tale, not just another purely political biography - Spackman's research, combined with a reappraisal of early works and study of recent investigations by others, now enables a truer’, more holistic picture of Lloyd George to finally emerge.