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The Prime Ministers: From Robert Walpole to Margaret Thatcher
They have come in many shapes and sizes, these 48 men and one woman who have guided the destiny of Britain from 1721 into the 1980s, from Robert Walpole to Margaret Thatcher. Who could be less alike than the flamboyant Benjamin Disraeli and the almost mouse-like Clement Atlee? Yet the former established a new Tory party and the latter steered a motley crew with immense skill through the shoals of social democracy which had to be navigated after World War 2.
In a series of masterly vignettes Mr. Thompson traces the development of the prime ministerial role, monopolise at first by the aristocracy ruling from the House of Lords and then in the 19th century, heyday of the bourgeoisie, by men such as Robert Peel and Gladstone, sitting in the House of Commons. Today it is unthinkable that a peer should be a Prime Minister. The Earl of Home renounced his peerage in a flash when nominated by commoner Harold Macmillan to succeed him and became plain Sir Alec Douglas Home.
There were great men in the list - the elder and younger Pitt; Disraeli and Gladstone, those sworn enemies Asquith and Lloyd George, the opposing poles of liberalism; Winston Churchill, as long as there was a war on, and even in peacetime a giant. There were nonentities - who remembers Viscount Goderich? But it is Mr Thompson's view that this body of men avoided the major political pitfalls and played their collective part in furthering the democratic ideal.
[From the book dust jacket]
In a series of masterly vignettes Mr. Thompson traces the development of the prime ministerial role, monopolise at first by the aristocracy ruling from the House of Lords and then in the 19th century, heyday of the bourgeoisie, by men such as Robert Peel and Gladstone, sitting in the House of Commons. Today it is unthinkable that a peer should be a Prime Minister. The Earl of Home renounced his peerage in a flash when nominated by commoner Harold Macmillan to succeed him and became plain Sir Alec Douglas Home.
There were great men in the list - the elder and younger Pitt; Disraeli and Gladstone, those sworn enemies Asquith and Lloyd George, the opposing poles of liberalism; Winston Churchill, as long as there was a war on, and even in peacetime a giant. There were nonentities - who remembers Viscount Goderich? But it is Mr Thompson's view that this body of men avoided the major political pitfalls and played their collective part in furthering the democratic ideal.
[From the book dust jacket]
- GenresHistory
260 pages, Hardcover
First published November 17, 1980
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