David Lloyd George

Declaration of the result of the 1880 general election poll at Leeds Town Hall, in which Gladstone’s Liberals have a majority, illustration for The Graphic, 10 April 1880. Look and Learn / Illustrated Papers Collection / Bridgeman Images.

The End of Britain’s Weeks-Long General Elections

General elections in Britain were once weeks-long affairs of corruption and chaos. The shift to one-day polling was slow.

Daily Mail illustration © Ben Jones/Heart Agency.

The Scandalous Success of the Daily Mail

In January 1944 the Daily Mail became the first transoceanic newspaper, having transformed the relationship between politics, the press and the people. How powerful is it really?

First World War munitions workers amid rows of artillery shells at the National Filling Factory in Chilwell, Nottinghamshire, 1917. CBW/Alamy Stock Photo.

First World War: The Fight on the Home Front

Soldiers on the front line in France and Flanders saw their fight as the only legitimate one. But in Britain, the mobilisation of the domestic workforce was integral to winning the First World War.

Recollections of David Lloyd George, Part I

Lucy Masterman’s husband was one of Lloyd George’s closest associates during the formation of the National Health Insurance and the controversies over the Parliament Act of 1909-1911. Mrs. Masterman draws on the records she kept at the time to offer a vivid portrait of Lloyd George’s intuitive political genius.

Recollections of David Lloyd George, Part II

At a time when class-distinctions were still immensely powerful, writes Lucy Masterman, Lloyd George became the first working-class Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Lloyd George’s Dilemma

The supreme direction of the First World War has remained a matter of controversy; in this essay, John Terraine contrasts Lloyd George’s hopes with the manner of their realization.

King Albert in World War I

David Woodward describes how, throughout the First World War, the King remained on the narrow strip of Belgium between Ypres and the sea which remained in Allied hands.

The Big Four: Peacemaking in Paris in 1919

Alan Sharp takes a fresh look at the statesmen responsible for the Treaty of Versailles

The House of Lords Rejects the 1909 People’s Budget

The budget proposed by the Liberal government was 'a social and political revolution of the first magnitude'. After passing the Commons, it was voted down by the House of Lords on 30 November 1909.

Dreamland of the Armistice

Alan Sharp looks at the factors shaping national policies in the weeks preceding the Paris Peace Conference, when the failure of the victorious allies to agree on aims and a process for negotiations with the Germans resulted in a ‘tragedy of disappointment’.