David Lloyd George: The Great Outsider

Description

A Welshman among the English, a nonconformist among Anglicans and a self-made man in the patrician corridors of power, David Lloyd George, the last Liberal Prime Minister of Great Britain, was the founding father of the Welfare State and was as great a peacetime leader as Churchill was in war. In this fascinating biography of an authentic radical, Roy Hattersley charts the great reforms - the first old age pension, sick pay and unemployment benefit - of which Lloyd George was architect and also sheds light on the complexities of a man who was both a tireless champion of the poor and a restless philanderer who was addicted to living dangerously.

Roy Hattersley is a politician turned writer. He was elected to Parliament in 1964 and in 1983 he became deputy leader of the Labour Party. He has written columns for The Guardian, Punch and The Listener.