Introduction

Abstract

Lloyd George has not lacked biographers. Indeed, he has been one of the most closely studied of all modern British political figures and the stream of scholarship shows no signs of abating. In the last ten years there have been two excellent short surveys of his career, by Martin Pugh and Chris Wrigley, and two multi-volume appraisals, by John Grigg and Bentley Gilbert, are currently underway.¹ However, agreement about the subject of these studies seems further away than ever. For instance, while Pugh attempted to place Lloyd George within a consistent ideological framework, Wrigley preferred to examine a number of different themes in Lloyd George’s career, concluding that his main aim was simply ‘getting on’.² Similarly, Gilbert, whilst producing many interesting new appraisals of aspects of Lloyd George’s career before 1914, has also been at pains to emphasise his disagreement with many of John Grigg’s assessments.