Damian Collins on David Lloyd George, Tuesday 12th May 2026

As part of the Fleet Street Quarter Festival of Words 2026 Damian Collins, author of Rivals in the Storm: How Lloyd George Seized Power, Won the War and Lost his Government, and a speaker at this year's Cymdeithas Lloyd George / Lloyd George Society meeting, will be in conversation with Richard Rhys O'Brien, long-standing Society member and biographer of Dame Margaret Lloyd George. They will be asking the question "Today, with crises at home and around the world, do we need leaders like Lloyd George who are unafraid to find unorthodox ways to take on important challenges?"

The event is on Tuesday 12th May, at Temple Church, and is sponsored by Cymdeithas Lloyd George / The Lloyd George Society. Signed copies of Rivals in the Storm by Damian Collins and The Campaigns of Margaret Lloyd George by Richard Rhys O'Brien will be available.

For further information and to book your place see here.

I hope to see you there! 

"But I walked home through the rain crying..."

On Sunday 12 April 1908 David Lloyd George was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was less than five months after the death of Mair, his eldest daughter and best-beloved child. Her death, aged 17, was probably the worst personal loss of his life. He cursed god, when not denying him altogether. For months he was liable to burst into tears at the unexpected sight of a picture of her in a friend's house, and he refused to return to live at the home they had shared, sleeping instead in his office at the Board of Trade where Willie Clark, his private secretary, would keep an eye on him, fearful for his sanity and his safety.

Following the advice of his old friend, and political foe, A. G. Edwards the Bishop of St Asaph, he found some relief in work. As President of the Board of Trade Lloyd George was promoting the creation of the Port of London Authority, and was also often called upon to mediate trade disputes - settling a cotton strike on the day after Mair's funeral, for example.

But to return to the 12th of April. Frank Owen, in Tempestuous Journey: Lloyd George, His Life and Times writes:

"Long and hard indeed Lloyd George had been labouring in these latter months. In the press of his work, he had found solace, or at least for a time, forgetfulness. He seemed to become again the same kind of man that he had been, though larger. A great tomorrow was promised to Lloyd George.

But the sorrow abided within. The evening of the day in April that he went to Buckingham Palace to see the King, on becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer, he wrote to his brother, William, describing the kindly welcome he had received. 

"But I walked home through the rain crying, because I knew my little Mair would not be there to receive me." 

And another new Lloyd George Book!

A very welcome arrival this week - Paul Spackman's Lloyd George - Welsh Radical, World Statesman, published by Barnthorn Publishing. The first full-length "life" for many years, it is the result of seven years research, and aims to give a more holistic portrait of the politician and the man.

Paul's approach is to "explore the specific and distinctively Welsh roots and influences" that shaped Lloyd George. He highlights the social reforms that laid the foundations of the Welfare State, Lloyd George's vital replacement of Asquith in the Great War, his treatment of Germany at Versailles, the Irish settlement, and the years after his all from power, with his development of creative and practical policies to address the great problems of the 1920s and 1930s. Lloyd George's legacy - and popular misconceptions of it - are re-examined, and Dame Margaret's important role is given proper attention.

It's a big book - over 700 pages, but then Lloyd George, for all his physical shortness, was a big man. Aneurin Bevan called him "a bigger man than Churchill", and in his parliamentary tribute "the most iridescent figure that ever illumined the British political scene". I shall read it with great pleasure and interest. 

New Lloyd George book

G. H. Bennett's Lloyd George and the Coalition Liberal Party - The Papers of Lieutenant-Colonel Scovell, General Secretary of the Party, 1919-1922 arrived at Ducky Towers yesterday. It's a welcome addition to the literature, looking at the role played by a much-neglected figure in the working of the Coalition Liberals, and giving a fuller picture of the workings of the party leading up to the 1922 general election. Dr Harry Bennett is Associate Professor in History at the University of Plymouth. His previous books include Hitler's Admirals, Hunting Tirpitz, and Destination Normandy: Three American Regiments on D-Day. Of particular interest to "Lloyd Georgians" are his British Foreign Policy during the Curzon Period, 1919-24, The Royal Navy in the Age of Austerity 1919-22: Naval and Foreign Policy under Lloyd George, and The 1922 General Election Reconsidered - High Politics and the Birth of the Modern British Election.

The Cymdeithas Lloyd George / Lloyd George Society website has details of a discount kindly arranged by Professor Bennett with his publishers, Boydell & Brewer. 

13 March 1915 - intimations of December 1916

On 13th March 1915 Sir George Riddell recorded golfing and lunching with David Lloyd George (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) and Rufus Isaacs (Lord Reading, the Lord Chief Justice). Isaacs had spent the weekend at Walmer with the prime minister, H. H. Asquith, and told Riddell that Asquith's great responsibilities sat lightly on him "except for two hours dealing with business ... he barely mentioned the war". 

Riddell asked Lloyd George if he thought the war was being prosecuted with sufficient energy, and was Asquith too easy going. LlG replied "Things are very unsatisfactory in that respect. Winston [Churchill] said to me the other day, 'We ought to make you a sort of Government Whiteley [the great department store], charged with the duty of providing each department with all the difficult and odd things it requires'". Isaacs replied "They should make you something more than that. A general supervisor and stimulator is badly needed".

All this was two months before Lloyd George became Minister of Munitions in response the the Shell Crisis, and a year and nine months before he was to replace Asquith as Prime Minister.