"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.