Tempestuous Journey: Lloyd George his Life and Times

UK: Hutchinson, 1954. Hardcover. Very Good/Good. h/b 784 pages, condition is very good, some edge wear and tears to the DJ. A gift inscription to the flyleaf. In March 1945, Mr. Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Britain, then marching on towards the triumphant end of the Second World War, paid this tribute to David Lloyd George, victorious prime Minister of the First World War, who had just died: "'When the English history of the first quarter of the Twentieth Century is written, it will be seen that the greater part of our fortunes in peace and in war were shaped by this one man. Tempestuous Journey tells what this man aimed at-and what he achieved. It is based upon many documents hitherto unpublished, and is illumined by intimate private letters from the mass of his own papers, set at the disposal of the author. It deals with his strange, stormy life, public and personal; his friendships with characters as diverse as Asquith, Bonar Law, Carson, Redmond, Northcliffe, C. P. Scoft, Birkenhead, Balfour, Churchill, Snowden, Beaverbrook, Smuts, "Billy" Hughes, Clemenceau, Woodrow Wilson-and also with his quarrels, at different times, with almost all of them. It tells how Lloyd George, before the First World War, foresaw-and sought to forestall--the rise of the Labour party in Britain as the challenge from the Left. He always wished to "do a deal, with them. But here he was frustrated, largely by the first Labour Prime Minister, whom he had helped to install, and who eventually "did a deal" himself-with the Conservatives. His name was Ramsay MacDonald.