The great little Welsh conjuror

It is a discomforting thought that, had the present fashion for kiss-and-tell memoirs, or the intense media scrutiny of politicians’ private lives, been in place a century ago, David Lloyd George might never have become prime minister. Yet, as this masterly fourth volume in John Grigg’s biography proves, he was a towering figure in exceptional times.

Grigg picks up his story with Lloyd George’s arrival in office in December 1916. Things were at a very low ebb in the war – the troops mired in Flanders, the Somme a dreadful and present memory, and Britain’s very existence threatened by the submarine war being launched by Germany to cut our oceanic life-lines.

Politically, Lloyd George was leading a coalition, but his own Liberal party was split, with the Asquithians refusing to serve under him and his main support coming from the Conservatives. In the event that gave him surprisingly little trouble – the opposition remained patriotically quiet until May 1918, when the war was drawing to a close. But, as I sit in the House of Commons pondering the contribution of a predecessor – with the 2002 Conservative party conference flickering beside me on the TV – it’s a potent reminder that politics is a fickle business. Today it’s the Liberal Democrats who are united while the Tories tear themselves apart and I can’t quite banish the consoling thought that it’s they who may be now embarking on decades in the wilderness.

While, inevitably, much of this meticulous study details the historical minutiae of the conduct of the war, it is the character of the central figure which dominates. And John Grigg has no hesitation in naming Lloyd George’s many flaws. Yet as he caustically observes:

Many who have only a slight awareness of [his] true importance in history think of him above all as a man of unbridled sexual appetites, or as one who corrupted the honours system.